


On Whose Authority

by Mithrigil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Sexual Situations, Biting, Bittersweet Ending, Crack Treated Seriously, Dom/sub, First Time, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Jedi Code, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Meditation, Predicament Bondage, Sex Education, Switching, Tantric Sex, Teacher-Student Relationship, erotic meditation specialist obi-wan kenobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-07-27 04:00:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7602571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After seven years training as Qui-Gon's Padawan, Anakin finally has questions that his Master can't answer. A specialist in force-user initiation and the erotic mysteries might be just what Anakin needs--but Kenobi is almost <i>too</i> good at his job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Stars above, this AT got out of hand. One minute you're making a joke about the Jedi and tantric sex, the next you make an assertion that Anakin would be so much more well-adjusted if Qui-Gon had lived, and then you have a sweeping universe of justifications and porn.

Master Qui-Gon made things sound so simple.

Sometimes he was right, of course: after studying with him for seven years, Anakin gave his Master’s philosophy a lot of credit. Qui-Gon, maverick that he was, relied on trust and forthrightness and, occasionally, aggressive negotiations far more than the Council was comfortable with. But it worked for Anakin, who, let’s face it, the Council never liked anyway, and he couldn’t ask for a better teacher.

So when Anakin was struggling with the complexities of the Universe, his Master’s straightforwardness had a tendency to be frustrating.

“I’ll explain it the way my Master did to me,” Qui-Gon said, “when I was your age. The Order does not forbid sexuality. If it did, it would be unpopular indeed.”

“No kidding,” Anakin muttered, still shifting uncomfortably on his meditation cushion.

Qui-Gon smiled, tight but clearly amused, probably not entirely at Anakin’s expense. “It’s expected that a Padawan, if interested in sex at all, be permitted to explore. Sometimes, the Master is responsible--”

Anakin winced.

“--that was more or less my reaction when Dooku insinuated as much, yes.” 

“No offense, Master.”

“None taken, Anakin. Rare is the sentient who wants to pursue someone four times his age. I _would_ make myself available to you if you did, but it’s easier that you don’t.”

Anakin nodded, and tried not to consider his Master making such an offer to anyone else. 

“Other times,” Qui-Gon went on, “the Padawan might have a specific person in mind--in which case, there might be an attachment that could drive the Padawan away from the Order.”

Anakin thought of Padmé, finishing up her last term as Queen of Naboo. She was beautiful in her finery, but never as strong and open as she’d been without the makeup and towering hair. When she thanked Qui-Gon and Anakin for their parts in saving her planet, she’d kissed Anakin on the forehead, and some nights he could still hear her beaded headdress jangling in his ears, and oh how he wanted to take it off and feel her hair between his fingers, her skin without a layer of paint--

“There’s no one specific,” Anakin said, huffing into his shoulder. “No one attainable, anyway.”

Qui-Gon, who certainly knew everything, nodded sagely and went on. “If you do get the chance, I won’t stop you. But it’s a difficult path, and it might lead you to difficult choices.”

There was no arguing with that at all, so Anakin just nodded and waited.

“So what I suggest is that, when next we check in at Coruscant, you avail yourself of a professional.”

Anakin blinked, color rising in his cheeks. “A pleasure slave?”

Qui-Gon, of all people, knew how hateful such a thing would be to Anakin. He reached out a hand and rested it reassuringly on Anakin’s bent knee. “No. Not a slave. A specialist, a healer. There are several sentients on the Temple staff who make themselves available, as part of their duties, for Jedi who want to explore sex. Most of them are Force-sensitive themselves, actually.”

“How?”

“Some who fail their trials don’t join the AgriCorps or the expeditions. They stay to assist the healers or the archivists. I know we haven’t been at Coruscant enough for you to make any acquaintances, but I’m sure you’ve run across a few in medbay.”

Anakin looked down, considering. “I thought they were Jedi.”

“Some of them could have been, if the Force was willing. But they still serve, and teach, and it’s considered a great honor to be counted among their ranks. So if you want to understand what’s happening to you, and some ways of controlling it or exploring it, I’d recommend approaching them.”

A short, polite nod led into Anakin raising his head, and looking his Master in his kind, mirthful eyes. “So that’s what you did?”

“Yes. I was sixteen. Master Dooku scheduled a ten’s leave for me, and the healers paired me with a man, a Nautolan named Uro. We met in the afternoons and evenings, and he, ah, had a great deal to teach. I saw him again a few times, after I was knighted, but by then I felt I had a handle on things. So to speak.”

“So to speak,” Anakin repeated, still dumbfounded. “Let me get this straight. When we go back to Coruscant, you’ll tell the healers that I need a--specialist, and they’ll meet me privately, and we’ll...”

“Have sex,” Qui-Gon said. “Yes. And probably a few other things, if you’re inclined. Experimental meditation, substances, self-pleasure.”

“And no one is owned by anyone else?”

“Not at all. The specialists are employed by the Temple, and have every right of refusal without any penalization whatsoever.”

“And it’s not me...picking someone?” The idea of choosing from a lineup set Anakin’s stomach plummeting clear into the floor.

Qui-Gon lifted his hand, and gave Anakin’s braid a reassuring tug. “No. If you tell me your preferences or have specific questions, I’ll make sure the healers take them into account. But it’s their recommendation, and the specialist’s choice.”

Master Qui-Gon made things sound so _simple._

* *

Preferences.

In hyperspace, with the shuttle on full auto and his Master asleep on the other side of the room, there was little else Anakin could be doing right now. He’d been staring at the datapad for half an hour. In the dark. With nothing to say.

Well, with everything to say. _Preferences_. As if he thought about sex with anyone but Padmé. He could just write down everything about her. About her angelic face and beautiful hair and the shape of her mouth, and how when she laughed it sounded like wind through glass chimes, and how he saw one holo of her in a backless gown and he wanted to map out her spine with his tongue--but the healers wouldn’t want to hear about that. That would be _far_ from helpful. And the idea of being with someone just because she looks like Padmé felt unspeakably horrible. No, no preferences. Not as such.

Which left questions. Private, uncomfortable questions.

On the other bunk, Qui-Gon turned over in his sleep. Anakin fidgeted, drumming his fingers against the datapad. Questions. Questions to ask someone not Qui-Gon, about the things that plagued Anakin in his sleep.

At least that was a place to start. Anakin typed, _What if I can’t stop thinking about it?_ He hoped that the _it_ would be understood from context. The next question followed quickly enough, _Is it possible to like it so much that you have to leave the Order?_

After that, it was a storm of keystrokes. _Does it weaken your connection to the Force? Do people use the Force during sex? If we aren’t supposed to feel passion, does that make sex different for Jedi? What if you dream about being hurt or hurting other people? Can you have visions during sex? What if you dream of things you’d never do in real life? Is it okay that I only think about people my own species, or is that not the Jedi way? What if you can’t control your shields? What if I don’t want to do this? Why would someone choose a life where you have to do this with people you don’t love?_

In the morning, he had the indent of the datapad’s corner against his cheek. Qui-Gon didn’t tease him about it. Not aloud, anyway.

* *

Presenting themselves to the Council took forever, of course, during which Anakin did as good Padawans do and stayed (mostly) silent over his Master’s shoulder. They had a great deal of new intelligence to impart, after all. He half-expected Qui-Gon to bring up exactly what _else_ had brought them back to Coruscant, but, blessedly, he didn’t. The Council probably knew everything anyway. Yoda was _definitely_ wagging his ears at Anakin. Anakin made sure his shields were firmly intact. He’d already offended the Council enough just by existing; he didn’t need to rankle them by casting aspersions.

As soon as they bowed and were dismissed, Anakin followed Qui-Gon out, into the grand transparisteel elevator. In that relative privacy, Qui-Gon turned to him and asked, “Have you brought it with you, or did you send the list to our quarters with the luggage?”

Anakin simply produced the datapad (unwilling to print anything of this nature on flimsiplast) and handed it over. The list of questions had grown on the journey, but it didn’t warrant an entire pad of savespace, so Anakin braced for being laughed at.

Qui-Gon did no such thing, and didn’t even make a move to read it. He just tucked the pad into his cloak pocket and pressed the floor button to get off at medbay. “Clear your schedule for the next ten,” he said, calm and maybe even proud, “starting tomorrow. If you change your mind, just say so, and I’ll go to medbay on your behalf.”

All Anakin could think to say was “Thank you, Master.”

The lights of the city streamed by behind the elevator walls, in the easy, companionable silence. Qui-Gon’s long hair, nearly all steel-grey after these seven years, reflected the planet like a clouded mirror. When Anakin had been young, he’d loved to help braid it, to practice dealing with his own, to remember his mother. He reached up now, to touch it, and Qui-Gon turned around, concern writ clearly on his craggy face.

“Anakin?” he asked, his meaning plain.

Anakin simply stepped forward and held him.

It was hard enough to articulate, even to himself, how thankful he was for his Master’s trust and respect. But the Force could show it for him, and Anakin pushed through it to share this moment: this apprehension, but also gratefulness and hope. The way it felt to have his fear valued but not countered, his past acknowledged but not used to put him down or hold him back. Qui-Gon embraced him as well, his pride and fondness emanating through the Force like so many times before.

“I’m catching up,” Anakin laughed, because if he didn’t he’d definitely get too sentimental.

Qui-Gon rapped his jaw against Anakin’s forehead, to show that no, “You’ve still got a ways to go.”

“You’re just unnaturally tall, Master.”

“I never caught up to mine,” Qui-Gon pointed out. “As far as I know, he’s still taller.”

* *

Apparently the Temple had rooms set aside for the express purpose of, well, whatever this was. Anakin stood outside one of them, hand hovering over the call button, still not quite sure what to expect. After his morning session in the salle and the meditation rooms, a healer had come to him with a flimsiplast sheet containing a room number, a time, and a short checklist of cleanliness praxes. So Anakin had spent the early afternoon in the ‘fresher giving himself the second-most thorough scrub-over of his life and a long meditative soak, and his hair was still wet. Or that could be nervous sweat. He wasn’t entirely sure.

Fear? _Seriously?_ How could he permit himself to be afraid of meeting someone? He’d faced down enormous, ravenous creatures on the Outer Rim and he raced desert deathtraps for fun. This should be nothing.

He pushed the call button. The speaker rang out, an echo inside, and then a voice, crisp and Core-accented. “Padawan Skywalker?”

It took Anakin a moment to gather himself for the answer. “Yes. I was told to come here.”

The door slid open, and Anakin wasn’t sure what else he’d been expecting, but this was what he got: a man, human, thirty standard at most, a very little shorter than Anakin but broad and well-made, with a shock of dark copper hair and smallish grey eyes and a day’s shadow of hair on his hard cheeks. He wasn’t dressed like a pleasure slave of any kind, wearing the same longish white tunic favored by the Temple healers. Nonthreatening-- a twinge mischievous and amused, but nonthreatening. He looked Anakin in the eyes and gave a polite short bow, the same kind Anakin might use to greet a visiting diplomat. 

“My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he said as he uncurled. “The Force has brought us together, for me to teach you.”

Anakin forced his gaping mouth to shut and tried to resume breathing. It took a moment.

“Come in.” Obi-Wan stood aside, already turning his back to the door. “Something to drink?”

“Water. Yes. Thank you.” For all Anakin’s stammering, at least his voice didn’t crack, like it had for the last two years.

Anakin still wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, or dreading, but this room wasn’t it either. It was a large multifunction space, in warm browns and golds, with an occluded window letting in the dim Coruscant lights but no clear images from outside. With everything in the room so low to the ground--no couch or chairs, just meditation cushions, a side table with a datashelf beneath, and a three-wide bed only knee-high off the floor--the space seemed to stretch out toward the walls. Obi-Wan availed himself of the conservator in the corner, which couldn’t quite pass for a kitchenette. The ‘fresher must also be in that general area, behind a door, but there were no other rooms.

Obi-Wan handed him a glass of water, so cold it was condensing on the outside. Anakin folded both palms around it--the better to keep his hands from shaking--while Obi-Wan carried his toward one of the cushions and sat down, indicating that Anakin should do the same.

“I’m sure you have questions,” he said.

Anakin sat, careful not to spill. “Why?”

“Because your message consisted entirely of them.” From the bright, squinting smile, Anakin _knew_ Obi-Wan was making a joke, but he reached out a hand to curb Anakin’s flare of offense. “It’s why I looked forward to meeting you. Not everyone is so candid with their concerns as you were.”

Heat spread across the nape of Anakin’s neck, threatening to show on his face. “So I asked weird questions.”

“No, not at all. Just ones few others are comfortable asking outright.” Obi-Wan’s smile was still light and knowing, but a strange relaxation came over his eyes. “So many young Jedi think they should be above their passions, trying to look better, calmer, instead of meeting them head-on. But most of them have the same concerns you do. Some, at any rate. So please, ask anything, anytime.”

_Qui-Gon would like him,_ Anakin thought, clear at the forefront of his mind. It was as cooling to the air around him as the cold water was to his skin. “All right. How long have you been...”

“Here? Doing this?” When Anakin nodded to indicate that he was right, Obi-Wan nodded and answered. “I joined the healers when I was eighteen, and took on this specialization at twenty-two. So, six years or so.”

“Do you see a lot of people?”

“One or two every year.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

Obi-Wan met Anakin’s eyes again, taking a long sip of water. “There’s more to that question than my answer,” he said, not sarcastic but tense. “I understand you’re concerned that I’m doing this because I have no other options. I assure you, I do, and I make the choice to serve at the Temple of my own free will. I _enjoy_ , more than I can articulate, learning all the different ways our bodies interact with the Universe, and helping other sentients come to their own understanding. I may not have been called to be a Jedi, but that doesn’t cut me off from the Force in the least, and that is what I get out of this. A deeper understanding of the Force. Just like you.”

“Like I have?”

“Like you _want_ to have,” Obi-Wan said. “We’re learning together. Different things, but at the same time. Like your Master learns from you.”

Qui-Gon had said as much, about Anakin showing him a thing or two through the years. He knew about Qui-Gon’s other Padawans: the one who failed, the one who fell, and the one who died on Naboo facing the Sith menace. Qui-Gon learned to trust himself again, teaching Anakin, and to adapt his style, and to flout the Council without flouting the Force. The idea that Obi-Wan might get something out of this too, and out of Anakin in specific, washed most of Anakin’s remaining reservations away.

“All right,” Anakin said, after a long, thorough drink of water. “So, what do we do?”

* *

Obi-Wan took his clothes off first. “It’s only fair,” he said, prying off his tunic with little ceremony and folding it, cursorily. “What’s the first question that comes to mind?”

Anakin stared. Obi-Wan carried himself as if he had no idea what he looked like naked. Then again, if Anakin looked like that, all sand-white skin and curved muscle and hard hipbones and--well, Anakin wouldn’t believe it either.

Once he was nude, Obi-Wan sat back down on the cushion, knees folded as if to meditate. “Questions, Padawan Skywalker.”

“--Right.” Anakin shucked his robe and opened his tunics--at least he’d filled out these last few months, he wasn’t a complete slouch--and busied himself folding them. “Um, the first one to come to mind or the first one on the list?”

“Why not both?” Obi-Wan laughed, and tapped the cushion that Anakin had been sitting on before. “I seem to recall that was a straightforward one. _What if I can’t stop thinking about it?,_ right?”

“Right,” Anakin repeated. And peeled off his pants. And sat, quickly. Not that he was ashamed or anything. He was just as big (he thought), just not as hairy. Or as neatly kept.

Obi-Wan glanced at Anakin’s hips, then settled his own, hands resting on his knees. “The short answer is that your body tends to know what it wants. I’ve described it to others like the sensation of a craving. If you have a salt deficiency, you’re drawn toward saltier food. If you’re starved for intimacy, your mind fixates on it.”

“No wonder,” Anakin said, tone dark and more bitter than he intended. “Since we’re not allowed to have attachments.”

Obi-Wan sighed, and for the first time since coming in here Anakin saw the pleasant veneer drop, just for a moment. “You _can_ have intimacy without attachment. It takes an understanding of precisely what your body needs. Shall we explore that?”

Anakin was already embarrassingly flushed and hardening, just from sitting an arm’s length away. But hearing Obi-Wan ask--in those posh, even tones, so thick with authority and gracefulness, like a Senator or a Master or a vision--stopped Anakin’s breath with heat alone.

He nodded. It was all he could manage.

Obi-Wan nodded in return. “Good. We can stop at any time. I think I’m going to ask you some questions of my own, to start.”

“Yes,” Anakin breathed.

“Do you touch yourself?”

For a moment, all the tension in the room completely dissipated. Anakin looked Obi-Wan in the eye, level and judging. “Yes. Stupid question.”

Obi-Wan laughed. It wasn’t anything like Padmé’s, but musical in its own way, more like birds than bells. “Well, stupid questions get stupid answers. Here’s a smarter one, then. Would you be so kind as to show me _how?_ ”

There was no challenge that Anakin wouldn’t meet. He’d already come in the door, already chosen to stay.

He did have to ask, though, “Do I have to stay on the cushion?”

“Of course not.” Obi-Wan grinned. “Bed or ‘fresher, take your pick.”

Two points in favor of the bed: one, it was right there, and two, the idea of being cramped in a ‘fresher with Obi-Wan felt simultaneously uncomfortable and _hot as All the Sith Hells_ , which would probably make Anakin’s staying power embarrassingly nonexistent. So he half-walked, half-crawled over to the low bed in the corner. The covers were feather-soft but sturdy, so cool to the touch that they set Anakin’s skin tingling. He slid over to the pillows propped against the wall, turned to sprawl and face Obi-Wan again. He’d come to the edge of the bed but remained sitting on the cushion, just propping his elbow on the corner, clearly watching but not like an overseer. More like Qui-Gon or Master Koon keeping an eye on him in the hangar, or Master Windu at saber practice, looking out to correct his form. (Thinking of this as saber practice broke Anakin into a gust of nervous laughter.)

Obi-Wan nodded, just once, and Anakin went to work. Considering how little time he had apart from Qui-Gon, Anakin was used to keeping quiet and going as soft and quick as possible, so he started strong. He gripped his dick and tried not to look at Obi-Wan’s face too much--which worked, since just one glance at those cool grey eyes sent a spike of heat straight down into Anakin’s balls and all he saw was warm red. Being _watched_ , at all, was a sick twist in Anakin’s heart but not enough to make him stop or slow down. Sweat slicked his palm, his thighs, and he made the strokes longer to gather it up, go faster--

“Are you familiar with moving meditation?” Obi-Wan asked, quiet but still sharp enough to snap Anakin out.

“What the hell?”

“Trust me, Padawan Skywalker. And don’t stop. Are you or aren’t you?”

He needed to pant, twice, to get the breath to say it. His dick was full and heavy, scalding to the touch. “Yes. Yes, I know how.”

“Do you think you can slip into it while you’re doing this?”

Anakin could swear that the heat haze of Tatooine wavered the air in front of Obi-Wan’s eyes. There was no judgment. A little challenge, and a little interest, but this wasn’t a joke.

He shut his eyes again, and tried. Took stock of his body, its familiar motion, the ease of his hands on his skin, the Force surrounding him. He focused, followed the grid of air and life permeating this room, felt himself strengthening in it. The Force was a map and his body was a source, his pleasure like seismic activity waiting to shake the world. But his hand was at the center of it all, and his body in orbit around it, sensitive all over.

He felt every bead of sweat emerging on his skin. He felt the glide of silk against his back and shoulders and feet. He felt the beads of his Padawan braid drum against his collarbone, fine hairs tickling his throat, his flesh drawing hot and sinuous and tight.

It had never been like this, alone.

Obi-Wan’s voice was as much in his mind as his ear. “What would you like most, right now?”

In meditation or not, the sudden answer burst out first. “Someone--to touch me.”

“May I?”

Anakin groaned, a tangle of _yes_ and _please_ , and came.

* *

When Anakin fought his eyes open, Obi-Wan was closer than he’d been. He sat on the edge of the bed, placed his hand on Anakin’s shin. His palm was rough and just cool enough, like the first gust of air from walking into a new room. Anakin sank into the pillows, his breath still coming hard.

“Well?” Obi-Wan asked, arch and maybe a little smug. “Are you all right?”

In lieu of answering, Anakin lunged over and kissed the smirk off Obi-Wan’s face.

_That._ That was exactly what Anakin wanted. Lips against his, hands on his shoulders, skin pressed to his own. Obi-Wan laughed into him, maybe startled, but Anakin chased the sound with his tongue and teeth and captured it. To keep it. To prove it was there.

Obi-Wan pulled back, tightening his hands on Anakin’s shoulders just enough to warn him. “Padawan Skywalker. There’s no rush. We have ten days.”

Ten days. Right. This was temporary. This wasn’t something that belonged to Anakin. No attachments. No possessions.

Fingers carded through Anakin’s hair, pushing back along the sides of his scalp, down to the nape of his neck. Obi-Wan looked him square in the eyes, his clear, some bright blue and green mixed in with the grey, like the crystal caves of Ilum. “I’m not saying no. We can do this, if you want to. But I want to make sure you understand what just happened to you, and what you want most right now. Breathe. Come down.”

It was harder, like this, to release his anger into the Force, and Anakin didn’t have an easy time with empty meditation on the best of days. Trying to calm down with a hard, naked body aligned with his, with the smell of sex thick in the air and Obi-Wan’s stubble prizing his cheek, was probably impossible. But, breathing. Moving meditation. He stroked his fingers down Obi-Wan’s side, traced them through the smear of his come spread between them. This, he could do. And Obi-Wan didn’t go still or retreat, just kept soothing Anakin’s scalp with his thumbs and fingertips, followed along.

“Play it back,” he said, a low whisper. “What did you feel, in that moment before you finished?”

“Longing,” Anakin said. “Loneliness. I wanted you to touch me. I wanted...” He relived that moment the best he could, and grimaced at the inherent weakness of it. “I wanted to know why it was better with you. You weren’t even touching me, but it was different.”

“Vulnerable.” Obi-Wan nodded, and the fringe of his hair tickled Anakin’s forehead through the sheen. “Not weak, I assure you. Vulnerable. Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?”

It was such a strange thing to say, somehow: here he was, on his naked back under Anakin, their legs entangled, mouths bruised from one hard kiss and throats swollen from breathing the same air, and here he was treating this like a _lesson_. Anakin didn’t know whether to laugh in his face or punch him. Neither would be a particularly Jedi thing to do, but the instinct was sour and thrilling, curled up in his gut.

“Fine,” Anakin said instead.

Obi-Wan, evidently, took his tone as intended. “Last one for tonight, then. Has someone ever looked at you, weighed you and measured you at your best, held your life in their hands, and cast it down?”

Anakin’s breath caught in his throat. The Force between and around them trembled with memory, concern and fear and failure, the Council in a ring and two words: _Too old._

“Yes.” The world fell out of Anakin’s lips and barely sounded at all. “Yes, I have.”

Obi-Wan held him, palms flat to his back, looked him firmly in the eyes. Their foreheads touched, like a promise. “I will never do that, Padawan Skywalker. I will not judge you, or deny you, or dismiss you. As long as you want this, we’ll have it. But I want to make sure that you get your answers. Trust me to help you find them. Even if that means slowing down and stepping back first.”

A promise. 

“I still want to jerk you off,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan’s startled laughter was even more attractive than the half-dozen other smiles he’d given. It lit him up, wrinkled the corners of his eyes and made them sparkle. He ran a hand through Anakin’s hair and said, “All right. But treat it like moving meditation. See what you feel.”

Anakin had no intention of turning that invitation down. He pulled up to his knees and gave Obi-Wan a once once-over, like he would for a machine in need of repair. Obi-Wan was no machine, as organic as they came, but Anakin still traced his skin with fingertips the same way he’d pat a hull or a chassis trying to find the seams. He pulled back his mind enough--it took a few breaths--to feel the world under his hand, the civilization of pathways and synapses and impulse. A heartbeat. Teeth worrying a lip. A quick roll of muscle, shifting at the ghost of a touch. Obi-Wan’s breathing was measured and strong, and he sank into the bed as if he was floating on his back, leaving himself entirely at Anakin’s disposal.

How could Anakin even _describe_ how that made him feel?

He trailed his hand down Obi-Wan’s chest to his hip, into the thatch of his pubic hair and then the inside of his thigh. Obi-Wan’s dick, flushed red to nearly purple at the tip, stood out in clear invitation. In the Force it was a concentration of intent and energy, like a knot in the middle of a battlefield or the astromech just before takeoff. But there were other paths, other nodes of pleasure and want, spread out beneath him. Obi-Wan’s hands. Knees. Lips. Throat. The juncture of his thighs to his pelvis. Others, behind and within. The Force _spelled him out_ , showed Anakin all the places he could touch, all the reactions he could get.

“How do you feel?” Obi-Wan asked, all breath.

“You said no more questions,” Anakin teased.

“That one, I have to ask.”

Anakin laid his hand on Obi-Wan’s thigh, mere hairs from where he wanted it most. “Powerful,” he said. “Confident.”

When Obi-Wan nodded, his throat stayed bare, the strip of paler skin beneath his stubble on display. Anakin didn’t think, just leaned down and closed his lips and teeth there, licking and sucking around the sudden groan. Obi-Wan arched up, and Anakin closed his hand at the base of Obi-Wan’s dick. _Like reverse-grip on a saber,_ he thought, still in the half-trance of moving meditation and submerged in the Force. He pulled, too tight around the unfamiliar thickness, but Obi-Wan’s breath caught and his Force-resonance flared hot so it couldn’t be that wrong. He jerked it again, twisted. Not wrong at all.

_Take him apart,_ the Force said, clear as the heat pooling in Anakin’s groin.

If throwing one off before had been a revelation, this was a _discovery_. The more Anakin touched him, the harder they both got, the faster Anakin wanted to go. He straddled Obi-Wan’s thigh and ground down, rocked his hips in counterpoint with his hand, like the twin turbines of an engine. It was a race, perfect focus, nothing but a course and a goal, and Anakin felt so thoroughly _now_ that he couldn’t imagine coming back.

Obi-Wan came with a hoarse, half-stifled sound, hands and back still flat to the bed but his hips arched up into Anakin’s fist. Anakin didn’t stop jerking him until he was done, drained, stomach streaked white.

Before Obi-Wan could ask, Anakin answered. “I saw what you get out of it,” he said. He was still hard, and his throat swollen, but he could wait. Maybe. “I felt you connect.”

“Good.” Obi-Wan lifted his right hand off the covers, cupped Anakin’s hipbone. “I hope that answered some of your questions.”

“Gave me more,” Anakin admitted.

Obi-Wan trailed his fingers down Anakin’s length, a prelude, a promise. “We have time.”

Anakin’s hateful thought of _Ten days_ was drowned out in a rush of want.

* *


	2. Chapter 2

He slept there, not the full night, perhaps a shift. It was still hours before dawn, Coruscant’s skies the darkest they ever get, and Obi-Wan wasn’t there. There were towels, folded neatly next to Anakin’s clothes on the floor beside the bed, with a note perched on top like a gift:

_Padawan Skywalker: Please excuse my absence this morning; I am required in medbay. Feel free to use the refresher and help yourself to anything in this room._

_It has been, and I hope will be, a pleasure. Look forward to tonight._

_-Kenobi_

Anakin spent a good half-hour in the ‘fresher.

* *

Even if Qui-Gon insisted on his schedule being clear, Anakin knew he was still supposed to train every morning. After returning to their quarters to catch another burst of sleep and change his clothes, Anakin brewed tea and got breakfast started for whenever Qui-Gon decided to get up. No matter where they were, Qui-Gon tended to be awake early, but didn’t usually emerge from his room until he’d gone through a full meditation circuit and watered all the plants. Which left Anakin with little to do, but there _was_ a disassembled acceleration compensator he’d been modifying off and on in the corner. He’d kill a few minutes with that.

It seemed strange--the idea of meditating about meditation--but Anakin couldn’t stop replaying last night otherwise. The look on Obi-Wan’s face when he finished, the feel of someone else’s hands, a husky voice asking to touch him and promising more; Anakin knew it wouldn’t have been like this if he’d never come to the Temple. He might have done it earlier, sure, but in hindsight he definitely knew how sex worked on Tatooine. No amount of humidifying or cooling could make a place in Mos Espa feel as welcoming as that room. No person, however knowledgeable, would have treated Anakin with that much respect. Hell, Watto would probably have rented him out to the highest bidder, or gambled away his virginity in the back of some cantina. He’d threatened to do the same with Shmi. Anakin didn’t know whether anything had ever come of that, but thank the stars Shmi was now safe on Serenno, in the household of Qui-Gon’s former Master.

The tea steeped, and the sun rose, the machine came together. Beyond the windows, Coruscant woke, if it had slept at all.

Last night’s lesson finally dawned on Anakin: this whole endeavor was about so much _more_ than sex. 

“I’m surprised you didn’t stay there.” Qui-Gon sidled past Anakin to the tea service, poured himself a cup.

“I needed to change clothes,” Anakin said, resetting the head of his screwdriver.

Qui-Gon laughed. “You bothered with clothes?”

Anakin groaned and fought down a blush. “ _Master_.”

“Will you be going back?”

Anakin nodded. No question of _how did it go_ or _did things work out_. That was private. And Qui-Gon knew it. “Of course,” Anakin said. “But Ob--the specialist didn’t stay, so I thought it would be better for me to come back.”

“He didn’t stay?”

“Something about medbay.”

Qui-Gon sipped his tea and nodded. “A Mandalorian ship docked last night and asked for asylum. I imagine it’s all hands down there.”

From what Anakin knew of Mandalore, its people weren’t the type to show weakness. But the latest civil war there had raged for ten years. If a ship made it all the way to Coruscant (and hadn’t started firing immediately), its passengers probably weren’t thinking of themselves as Mandalorian anymore.

Anticipating and doubtlessly sensing Anakin’s concern, Qui-Gon reached a warm hand over and ruffled Anakin’s hair. “I’m sure your specialist will tell you if you have to postpone.”

“I’m not worried,” Anakin said. And he wasn’t. About that, at least. Or _anything,_ he thought defiantly, focusing all his attention back on the machine.

* *

“Padawan Skywalker.” Obi-Wan greeted him at the door with the same bow as last night, the same inviting smile. “Please, come in.”

It was easier than yesterday, to be sure: no introductions, clear perspective. Obi-Wan already had a glass of water waiting, and passed it to Anakin on their way to the meditation cushions.

Anakin didn’t have to be told to sit, and Obi-Wan was still getting settled when Anakin said, “You’re going to ask about my new questions.”

“Yes, but I did plan on apologizing for my early departure first.”

“Master Qui-Gon told me about the Mandalorian refugees. I understand why you had to leave.”

“Did it make you uncomfortable?”

“No.” Anakin took a gulp of water. “No more than waking up in a strange room ever does.”

Obi-Wan smiled, drummed his fingers on his folded knee. “Either way, I intend to keep you here much longer tonight, if you’re willing.”

Anakin didn’t know which word aroused him more: _intend_ or _willing_. Either way, he shifted on the cushion, concentrated on the condensation against his palms. “How so?”

“May I ask the first question?” Obi-Wan teased.

“I think you just did.”

“No, you did. _How so._ ” They both laughed, Obi-Wan wry and quick, Anakin startled and defensive in spite of himself, but Obi-Wan went on. “Of the three times we were intimate last night, which one stayed with you most this morning?”

Well, he was definitely remembering all three _now_. And no amount of shuffling on this cushion could mitigate the feeling of someone else’s want layered over his own in the Force, someone else’s candid trust. He’d unambiguously been most comfortable the second time, when he was in control and Obi-Wan gave over to him. But most _comfortable_ wasn’t what he was asking: most _pervasive_ was.

“The first,” he answered. “The second felt best. Easiest. And I definitely want to do that again--and when you got me off after that, I wasn’t exactly thinking about anything else. But the first time...” when he’d jerked himself off, and Obi-Wan just watched, “You called me vulnerable. Why?”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows knit, and he looked strangely older. Though that might be the thicker scruff on his cheeks since yesterday. He might not have shaved this morning. Anakin thought about running his fingers through it, the feel of a beard scratching his barer cheek. “I told you that I appreciated your candor, in the questions you sent me. But asking is one thing, and doing’s another. I asked you to do something you weren’t expecting, and you did it, and trusted that I didn’t mean you harm. That was vulnerable. But I still sensed your apprehension, in that moment. And your relief, when it was done. I want to explore that before we go on.”

Anakin scoffed. “If this is what you mean by keeping here much longer, why don’t we just go to the Archives?”

“We could,” Obi-Wan laughed, rolling his eyes just slightly. “But I don’t think that’s an appropriate place for us to fuck.”

Anakin’s mind _blanked_. System crash. Fighter offline. Mindwipe.

 _Fuck_. In the halls of the Jedi Temple. In that posh Core voice. In the context of him and Anakin, here, tonight.

Obi-Wan smirked. “Do I have your attention?”

“Why--” Of all the times for Anakin’s voice to crack. “Why do you have to know?”

After another sip of water--which reminded Anakin to do the same, maybe he could cover up that tremor in his voice as just being parched--Obi-Wan set his glass down on the rug. “Everything we did yesterday focused on one person at a time. The first, in particular, when I wasn’t even touching you, and not expecting to be touched. That won’t always be the case. You’ll probably have partners, people with whom you wish to connect. It’s an altogether different experience, and it won’t always be a perfect balance of power or intention, but I think you could get something out of a simultaneous exercise. So to speak,” he added, quirking the corner of his mouth. Anakin thought about kissing it, hard. Now. “That apprehension I saw yesterday could be physically dangerous for you as a receptive partner, but in my experience it’s easier and more comfortable, and more revelatory, if the less experienced person yields.”

“So you want to fuck me,” Anakin translated, all breath and heat.

“Not necessarily.” Obi-Wan nudged his hands together, not quite the gesture of a bow. “What I _want_ is to spend tonight with the stated goal of getting each other off, at the same time. How we do it is entirely up to you.”

A thousand images flooded Anakin’s mind, like stars streaking by in hyperspace. “Do I have to decide now?”

“No. And I’d rather you didn’t decide just yet.” Obi-Wan had already been sitting cross-legged on the cushion, and from there it was just a slight repositioning for him to assume a meditative pose. He closed his eyes. Anakin didn’t. “You asked me if sex is different for Jedi, when you’re not supposed to rely on passion. The short answer is, unfortunately, yes. No one should have sex thoughtlessly, Jedi or not, but for most people it’s safe to let passion rule them once in a while. Not you. Not any Jedi. Not any person with your power. You must be mindful of your partner and in control of yourself, the same as when you spar, or levitate a rock, or when you open your mind to another. Here, but there. Controlled, yet vulnerable.”

 _“Passion, yet Serenity,”_ Anakin realized.

“Exactly. And better to explore the nuances here than with a saber in your hand, I say.”

Anakin laughed, more at ease now than he’d been at the start--but no less wanting. “I don’t know about that.”

“Breathe with me,” Obi-Wan said. “Empty meditation.”

Well, if he had to. Anakin sighed and focused on his breathing, listening for Obi-Wan’s so they could get in synch. Obi-Wan was louder than Qui-Gon about it, all of his tells ready and clear. Even with all he’d just said--and all Anakin was still thinking about, not that he had any chance of ignoring his erection now that he was seeing inward--Obi-Wan’s breathing was as steady as a clock. Anakin followed the best he could.

How was this man not a Jedi Knight? He was as collected as any of the others Anakin had come across in his training. He was versed in the Force, detached and observant, personable. Anakin saw him naked yesterday and there were no massive scars or disabling injuries, none visible anyway, and he couldn’t possibly be found wanting in any other capacity, so why not? Why was Anakin chosen and Obi-Wan not?

“Focus,” Obi-Wan whispered, and Anakin forced himself back on track. The room filled with the stable rhythm of synchronized being, the well-oiled machine, the civilization of the Force.

A presence nudged against Anakin’s, like his Master’s voice but younger, more deferent. Awaiting permission. Anakin let his shields retreat, opened his mind.

He saw Obi-Wan beneath him on the bed, slick and poised.

“Keep breathing,” he said, aloud. Anakin obeyed. “Steady. Try to maintain control over your body no matter what you see. Feel, but observe that feeling.”

_Against the wall of the ‘fresher, Obi-Wan on his knees, mouth tight and throat deep._

Anakin kept his eyes closed, but saw, no, felt, the red of his eyelids.

_Flat on his front, spread, waiting to let Anakin in._

_Their groins wedged together, their hands in tandem, intertwined._

Feel, he’d said, but observe that feeling. All Anakin observed was how hard, how hot he was getting under his robes. His throat dried, his breath hitched.

He saw _himself_ , riding Obi-Wan’s cock, holding him to the floor, taking his pleasure because it was _his and no one else could have it._ Meditation or not, he couldn’t stop the growl in his throat. He tried to bite it down, dug his nails into his knees to hold on--

“Don’t fight it,” Obi-Wan whispered, and fuck if that wasn’t helping at all. “Breathe. Accept the wanting. It’s there. It’s part of you.”

“I _do_ accept it.” Anakin choked in another gulp of air and the breath pattern broke. No more images. No more presence in his mind.

He opened his eyes, panting, and across from him Obi-Wan was shaking his head.

“You’re wondering why you can’t just act on it,” Obi-Wan said. “That’s not the same as accepting it. Will you try again?”

Anakin already felt hard enough to drive rivets, and here Obi-Wan was asking him to _wait? “Why?”_ He made the word sound like a curse.

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, challenging. “Why hold back at all? Why hold back right now?” His tone was dark, composed, and it was all Anakin could do to just listen, not tear across the room and _something, anything--_

It was what he’d felt last night, on the bed, touching himself. Waiting for Obi-Wan to move. To touch him back.

“I want you to want it too,” Anakin realized. “To want me.” _To prove you won’t push me away,_ he thought, but caught himself before letting that slide.

Obi-Wan’s smile was beatific, as bright as his Force signature. “And why fight down respect? That’s all that is. You know what you feel. You know what you want. Don’t think of it as restraint--just respect. You feel, you want, and you wait. Acknowledge the distance between us, and accept it.”

Anakin closed his eyes. His breathing evened out after a couple of fits and starts, with Obi-Wan’s to guide it. The images and feelings kept coming to him, the slide of skin against skin, stubble beneath his hands, heat sheathing his dick, and Anakin relaxed his palms on his knees, pressing down only a little.

“I do want you,” Obi-Wan said. “But I want this first. How do you feel?”

“Like an engine in overdrive,” Anakin grit out.

Obi-Wan laughed, just once, almost just a sigh. “Tell me what you want.”

“I--” Heat raced down Anakin’s spine and pooled in his groin, drawing everything taut. “I want to feel you. Everywhere. I want everything you showed me. All of it. I want you to feel like I do right now all over, because of me. Because you want.” His chest heaved. “I want to make you come.”

The cushions rustled. When Anakin opened his eyes, Obi-Wan was standing, shucking off his white robes. He was completely naked underneath them, his cock hard and red, jutting out and glistening at the tip. Anakin wanted it in his hand, his mouth, anything, but most importantly--

“Now,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin scrambled off the cushions and closed the distance. Obi-Wan toppled over onto the bed, taking Anakin with him, but any exclamation he made was cut off by Anakin’s tongue, down his throat, _now_. Kissing wasn’t enough, but at least it was _something_ , and Anakin ground his hips against Obi-Wan’s thigh through too many layers of cloth. All his, he remembered, somewhere in the haze. His clothes. Still wearing them. He tore himself away long enough to get his robe and tunic off at least, but now there wasn’t anything touching him there at all and that was unacceptable.

Beneath him on the bed, Obi-Wan reached toward a dish on the end-table, scooping up an unguent with his fingers. Still composed. Still together. Anger railed in Anakin’s mind, just one bright flash like cannonfire. Anakin yanked down his pants and underwear all at once--and it hurt, but not enough to stop him--and Obi-Wan looked up, propped himself on an elbow.

“How do you want it?” he breathed. His fingers shone. Anakin knew exactly what that slick was for.

“Yes,” was all Anakin could say. Anything else came out far too much like a sob. He hoped he didn’t sound as pathetic as he felt, but that was it. The answer to any question of _want_ was _yes. Yes, fuck me. Yes, let me fuck you. Yes. Now._

“Padawan Skywalker. That’s not an answer.” Obi-Wan’s fingers twitched, still too far away. Still not touching him. Not touching anything.

Anakin grabbed his hand, pulled him up from the bed. Their foreheads crashed together. So did their groins, just as painful.

_Something filling him, thick and rigid, pounding up over and over, all Anakin’s to take._

_“Please.”_ Anakin tried to focus on the last thing he’d seen, not even sure if Obi-Wan could hear him, could see what he saw through the Force anymore. There were no words.

Beneath him, Obi-Wan breathed, slow and hard enough that Anakin felt it where they touched. “In words,” he said. “I have to know. I have to trust you too.”

 _I have to trust you too._ Infuriating. True. Not enough.

“Fuck me,” Anakin snarled, pitching forward, burying his face in Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Whether it was sweat or tears stinging his eyes, he didn’t want to know.

Obi-Wan drew him closer, gently knocked Anakin’s knees apart. Too gentle. Like this, Anakin’s dick was trapped between them. His balls slid on Obi-Wan’s chest, hard enough to feel the jut of his ribs, the shift of muscle. Obi-Wan’s hand, cool and wet, traced Anakin where he was spread and Anakin nearly lost it, right there, before a single finger even breached him.

“Moving meditation,” Obi-Wan commanded. “Do something you want to do. To me.”

“What.” Anakin rocked his hips, chasing pressure. He forgot what he was going to say.

Another hand nestled into Anakin’s hair. Obi-Wan tugged gently, and Anakin followed, raising his face from the crook of Obi-Wan’s neck.

He had no idea what Obi-Wan saw, but he did nothing but look into Anakin’s eyes for what felt like an eternity.

The tip of Anakin’s Padawan braid batted Obi-Wan’s chin. 

Right. Jedi. Right. He was here to learn. Not just passion. Not just want. Serenity. No matter how much passion, how much want. Everything Obi-Wan said about mutuality, simultaneous experience, respect, it all flooded through him like a current turning on. He could do more than just feel. He could feel, _and_ elicit it in Obi-Wan, just like he wanted.

This time, when Obi-Wan breathed, Anakin matched it. And lowered his mouth back to Obi-Wan’s neck. And bit.

He _felt_ Obi-Wan gasp. The flutter, the sound, went straight to Anakin’s dick.

Moving meditation wasn’t the right word for this, not at all, but Anakin fixed all his attention on Obi-Wan’s throat the same as he did on the battlefield or the racetrack. Those hoarse gasps became outright moans, threaded with laughing approval as he squirmed under Anakin, twisting his hips to wherever they’d reach. The harder Anakin bit, the more Obi-Wan pushed, and Anakin still wanted everything but now he had enough to hold on to, enough to take this higher.

When Obi-Wan’s first finger pushed in, Anakin’s breath caught. His lips left Obi-Wan’s throat, only for a moment, only long enough to latch back on again when that finger moved, spreading him, slicking him. Obi-Wan whispered, praise and reminders, _breathe, yes, hold on to yourself, you’re doing so well,_ and the echo of every word vibrated in Anakin’s teeth and fingertips.

“Have you done this to yourself?”

“Yes,” Anakin panted, twice.

Two fingers definitely felt closer to right, closer to what he wanted. He felt the faint click of knuckles scraping together inside him, the difference between smooth blunt nails and callused fingertips, deeper than Anakin had ever gone on his own. “How many?”

“Just two.” Through the wet haze in his eyes, Anakin caught a glance of what he’d done to Obi-Wan’s neck and shoulder. Dark pink patches stood out, brighter than his freckles, some parts already turning blue. Proof, that Anakin had been there. He kissed them again, outlined everything with his tongue.

“You’ll--” That _hitch_ in Obi-Wan’s voice, that was proof too. “You’ll feel the difference at three.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Please.” Anakin said it right into Obi-Wan’s skin, like he could work the words in under his pulse and make them come true faster. _“Please.”_

Yes. Yes, he definitely felt the difference, at three. There was nothing else. There was no one else. A point, fighting him from the inside, carving space and not yielding, not moving. That space right before too much, that perfect moment of potential energy just before the hammer comes down or the blade meets flesh. It hurt, undeniably, but like a strained muscle telling him to move, keep going, wear through, he could take it and more.

“Are you all right?” If Anakin hadn’t felt that as well as heard it, he’d call it a hallucination.

“No more questions.” He tasted salt and heat. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop shoving his hips back and down.

Obi-Wan pressed a smile to Anakin’s forehead, almost a kiss. “Forgive me. I don’t want to harm you.”

Any pretense of meditating was gone the moment Anakin felt those fingers strike deep. There was nothing to guard him, or Obi-Wan for that matter, from the unleashed frustration screaming in his mind and chapping the corners of his mouth. He wanted to come. He wanted to be filled. He wanted Obi-Wan to suffer and beg the way he was begging, and he wanted it now.

He pried himself away from Obi-Wan’s fingers, rose up on his knees, and took hold of Obi-Wan’s cock. “Now.”

“Wait.”

 _“No._ Now. Now, if you’re going to do it at all!”

Obi-Wan glowered up at him from the bed. His eyes were hard with challenge, his neck a starmap of bruises and sweat. He flung out a hand toward the end table again, groping for the dish he’d used before. It took two tries to grab it, because he kept his eyes on Anakin’s the whole time. “I will not harm you,” he said. No compromise. No question in those words.

How was this man not a Jedi Knight?

In the time it took Anakin to wonder, Obi-Wan’s hand entangled with his own, firm around his cock. Two quick pulls spread the lubricant on and there, fine, Anakin was done. He guided it to his aching ass and shifted as much as he thought he needed to, nudging the head in. “Go slow,” Obi-Wan warned him, which Anakin completely ignored, already spearing himself in one sharp push.

It scalded him, so perfectly. Obi-Wan cursed. Anakin would have, if he could speak at all. The only word in his mind was _yes_. The only feeling was oneness, fullness. Anakin rocked forward, and oh, that was good too, better, moving was better. He anchored his hands on Obi-Wan’s shoulders, held him down and lifted himself up but that wasn’t relief at all, just more of that exquisite burn, so Anakin shoved down again. And again. And soon there was a rhythm to it, Obi-Wan thrusting up to meet him, grabbing his hips to set the pace or stall it. Anakin twisted, just a click left and _oh_ , there, so close--

“Take me with you,” Obi-Wan pleaded. Yes. Pleaded. The same want as Anakin’s. “The same time. Together. Try.”

Anakin really hoped Obi-Wan meant _now_. Because Anakin came, then, so hard he blacked out.

* *

Cool water dripped onto his forehead. Then into the corner of his eye. Anakin reached up to rub it away. Too much like tears. He curled in on himself, sore and groggy.

“Do you know where you are?” Obi-Wan asked, somewhere above him.

Anakin opened his eyes to the ridged white of a towel, cold and damp, smoothing back his hair. Obi-Wan was sitting beside him, still naked, still bruised around the throat. Anakin realized a moment later that he was lying backwards on the bed, feet toward the wall and head toward the door. Then he remembered why.

_Fuck, yes._

“No more questions,” he slurred, maybe smiled. Obi-Wan smiled back down at him too. That was good. Everything was good. Except. “Did you finish?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “I think tomorrow we’ll work on your staying power. If you’re interested.”

“Screw you,” Anakin said. He meant it fondly. He hoped it sounded fond. Just in case, he tried to show Obi-Wan through the Force that it was just a joke. 

“Probably,” Obi-Wan said, and Anakin realized he’d made more than one joke, after the fact. And laughed until his throat burned.

* *


	3. Chapter 3

Night three, Obi-Wan explained an exercise in control. For the first few minutes, Anakin was to go through the same moving meditation as he’d do on his own, tinkering with a new-model mouse droid.

“I consulted Master Koon about your usual projects.” Obi-Wan sprawled on the bed, datapad in hand, knowing smirk across his jaw.

“Not Qui-Gon?” Anakin honestly wasn’t surprised that Obi-Wan would bring him up to one of the Masters, but why not go right to the source?

Obi-Wan shook his head. “We don’t usually consult with a Padawan’s Master directly, unless there’s an emergency or a particular concern. It tends to make things awkward.”

“And you think it wouldn’t with Plo Koon?”

“Less than it would with Master Jinn.”

Anakin had to agree with that. He turned the mouse droid over and over in his hand, gave it a quick toss and catch as he prepared to sit down.

“Take off your clothes.” Obi-Wan didn’t look up from the datapad, just threw the order out like a reminder, _shut the ‘fresher door_ or _pack the cold-weather gear_.

Anakin was more amused than surprised, at this point. And put out enough to scoff, but not to protest. He shucked his robes and folded them, with less ceremony than he had on night one. And remembered, belatedly, to pry his multitool off of his discarded belt. _Then_ he sat down.

Aside from sitting on the floor naked, it was easy to forget where he was, why he was here. Frankly, that part wasn’t too strange either--he tended to go topless around large engines and anything that might catch his clothes in a cylinder--and taking a mouse droid apart was no great feat. Just delicate enough work to keep his attention.

“Our objective tonight,” Obi-Wan began, mostly aloud but with a newly-familiar Force undercurrent of nuance and _intention_ , “is to answer your questions about using the Force during activities of this nature. You had several, I recall.”

Without breaking the slowly-building trance, Anakin answered, “Yes.”

“I’m sure you remember handstand predicaments, basic levitation. This will be like that, with a particular emphasis on your self-control in the face of stimulation. I’d spar with you, but I don’t want to lose an arm.”

Anakin pried the chassis off the droid and let all three pieces levitate in place. “Was that a compliment?”

“Yes, I’ve seen your file. Regardless. As I said last night, you _must_ maintain control of yourself and your desires. You’re stronger than almost anyone you’ll meet, in this capacity. And you want, deeply. Believe me, I understand. But if you want to make the most of that strength, you must also have patience. I saw that in you on the first night, and yesterday you confessed that control was easier for you, in a way, if you had a clear objective. We’re examining that.”

“All right,” Anakin said, and went to work on the droid in earnest.

His awareness shrank, to the tiny chips and wires in his hands. The system wasn’t complicated, just precise, a neat order of snips and screws. The parts spoke to him, in their minute inorganic way, counting their own coils and guiding him through their little electric pains. It was where he’d always felt best in the world, _most_ in the world.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, precisely, but sometime between the axel controls and the vertical rotary mechanism, a phantom hand traced up his naked spine.

He looked up, trance broken. Obi-Wan was still on the bed, reading.

Anakin sighed, knowing _exactly_ what this exercise was going to be like.

And looking forward to every second.

* *

After three straight hours of saber training, Anakin would usually be ravenous enough to demolish an entire spit-roasted bantha. This morning, he went to the Archives instead. Lunch could wait.

A personal test, he called it, to himself. A test of patience.

Master Nu greeted him with surprise, but showed him to the terminals with Temple personnel inventory when he asked.

He hadn’t looked up his own file in years, and did that first, just to see if this--exercise? Assignation? Extracurricular Force study?--had any mention. It didn’t in the main database. Nor his study schedule, which was marked only CLEAR and approved by Qui-Gon. His medical subfile had a marker of PERSONAL LEAVE, NON-EMERGENCY with a start date of four nights ago, stamped with two code-signatures: Master Ahnkashi, head of medical, and, of course, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He searched out Obi-Wan’s file. When no results turned up, he slapped himself in the forehead, remembering not to search in the Jedi-specific archives, and went back to a Temple-wide search.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, MediCorps. Twenty-eight. Human. Born, Mid-Rim planet Stewjon, raised crèche starting at eighteen months. Initiate trial dates--four of them--FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, PASS. So he did pass. He made Padawan. But there was no Master listed. And, more importantly, no indication of why.

Dates of certification: droid-assisted surgery, Force-assisted surgery (only last year), guided trance, esoteric (human, near-human, nonhuman bipedal), linguistic (too many to list). Dates of residency. Dates of particular species experience. Dozens of dates, and no reasons.

Anakin considered slicing deeper into the archives for anything else. Did it count as hacking if it was a home system? Probably. And there might not even be anything to find. Specific patients and incidents were restricted to MediCorps, and archival Initiate Trial holos to open cases for Knights and Masters only, and Obi-Wan was a closed case as of ten years ago.

His stomach growled. Three straight hours of saber training. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of decision he should make on an empty stomach.

* *

Night four, Obi-Wan was already naked when Anakin arrived. And led him into the ‘fresher. And told him, point blank, that it was Anakin’s turn to make use of the Force as a sex aid, in this case, by keeping the water in the shower hot while Obi-Wan went down on him.

It worked. It worked so well that for round two Anakin attempted to prove he could keep them both from freezing while he fucked Obi-Wan into the wall. _That_ almost worked. As in, it worked until Anakin came. And then the blast of cold water bludgeoned him in the face, but it was fine, because Obi-Wan was laughing too.

* *

“Master?”

Qui-Gon looked up from the plant he was repotting. “Up early of your own volition, Anakin?”

A warm, teasing twinge ghosted across Anakin’s shields, and Anakin smiled back. “I wanted to make sure to catch you before you head out to Republica.” Anakin didn’t know most of the details, but the gist of it was that the Mandalorian ship from four nights ago was still here, lobbying with the Senate for some combination of aid and refuge.

“Of course,” Qui-Gon said, and patted the dirt off his hands into the pot. “It’s not urgent?”

Anakin shook his head. “I was wondering--is it possible to find out why someone never became a Jedi?”

“Someone in particular,” Qui-Gon said, knowingly.

Well, there went any chance of keeping this subtle. “What do you know about a healer named Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

Qui-Gon scrunched his eyebrows, glanced over his shoulder as if the thought might be there. “Nothing immediate. The name is familiar. I assume you’re asking because he’s your specialist.”

“...Yes.”

Qui-Gon moved on to the next plant on the ledge. “You do know that there’s a clear way to have this question answered.”

_Ask him,_ Qui-Gon obviously didn’t say, but his meaning was clear. It would have been clear even without the Force to illustrate.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Anakin said. “He’s so...in touch with the Force. He’s strong and dedicated and smart. He’s got amazing control, and he’s not injured or scarred, and even if he were that’s not supposed to matter.”

Qui-Gon traced a fingertip along one long frond of the plant he was watering. Around him, the Force seemed to thicken with apprehension, feelings released into the moment. “My Master was just as strong, dedicated, intelligent. A duelist and a scholar. His mastery of the Makashi form was legendary, and when he left the Order he was hale and whole. And now he is _Count_ Dooku, not Master Dooku, and he serves the Force in his own way, on his own planet. And if he hadn’t made that choice, your mother wouldn’t be as safe. Perhaps your specialist’s reasons are philosophical, and _personal,_ like his.”

“That doesn’t work either. He’s here, for one thing, and he’s got the Code down pat.”

“Well, _I’m_ here, and my feelings on the Council are well known.”

“He’s stricter than you.”

“A great many people are stricter than I, Anakin.”

“Yeah, but they’re all Jedi Masters. And Obi-Wan isn’t. He isn’t even a Knight!”

“Which brings us back to the simplest path to having your question answered.” Qui-Gon smiled over his shoulder, and the plant-mister in his hands trickled to a stop. Anakin watched the leaves thicken and bend under the new weight of water, and couldn’t help but remember last night, the ‘fresher, the lesson, the Force around him and Obi-Wan’s skin pressed to his own--

“I don’t want to ruin it,” Anakin admitted. He caught his shoulders sulking, and straightened them. “We’ve worked out so well until now. I don’t want to risk that.”

“Since when do _you_ not want to risk something?” Qui-Gon teased, and whether he meant it or not, it struck Anakin too deeply to ignore.

* *

“This particular lesson requires a great deal of preparation,” Obi-Wan explained.

Anakin didn’t mean to groan, exactly. But he couldn’t help asking, “Meditation again?”

“Not just yet. Perhaps not at all. But you should brace yourself for a lecture,” Obi-Wan admitted, tilting back on the cushion until his back almost rested against the foot of the bed.

While Obi-Wan, evidently, searched for the right way to go on, Anakin took a long drink of water. The Force of the room was tinged with his own threads of anticipation, but he wasn’t quite sure what Obi-Wan contributed until he spoke again.

“In your preferences, you asked two related questions that I’d never come across in a specialist request,” he said, evenly. “Not that I’ve never been _asked_ , but that weren’t brought up before I’d even met the Padawan in question. Can you guess which?”

Anakin’s ears burned. “The one about pain was definitely one.”

“Yes. And the other, about the things you might never act on in real life, but dream of all the same. I want you to understand that _many_ young Jedi ask these questions, and billions of sentients across the galaxy as well, and that you brought it up from the start speaks highly of your honesty--but also of your fear. If I’m going to help you come to a conclusion, it will take time, and the patience you’ve been cultivating, and a great deal of self-reflection on your part. But,” he raised his water glass and took a sip, “high risk, immeasurable reward.”

_High risk,_ Anakin repeated internally, holding back his desire to know Obi-Wan’s past and the discussion he’d had with Qui-Gon that afternoon. _Risk this first, and then the rest._ “I’m listening.”

Obi-Wan shook his head, and rather than speak, he peeled down the collar of his robes.

His neck was a mess. The bruises and scrapes of the past four nights stood out on Obi-Wan’s otherwise pale skin; deep midnight blue, sickly yellow, dark oxidized red, raised pinks and whites in the thousand shapes of Anakin’s mouth. Heat surged in Anakin’s groin at the sight--and then subsided when he saw Obi-Wan’s narrow eyes, the hard line of his lips.

“You did this,” Obi-Wan said. “I want you to tell me how that makes you feel.”

Anakin stared. His mouth hung open and he couldn’t bring it to close, and the breath on his lips was cold. “I’m--sorry.”

“Are you? Or are you embarrassed that you didn’t notice until now?”

“No, I--how _didn’t_ I notice? And why didn’t you heal them? Or tell me it hurt?”

Obi-Wan let his hand down. His robe didn’t quite fall back into place, some of the bruises still visible over the white cloth. “I didn’t bring them to your attention earlier because I didn’t mind them, and the other lessons were more important. I didn’t _heal_ them because I wanted to eventually bring them to your attention. So I ask you again: How does it make you feel?”

It took three long breaths for Anakin to even start thinking about it. There it was, proof that they’d been together, proof that Obi-Wan wanted it too. He loved the taste of that skin, the sounds Obi-Wan made when he closed his teeth on it, the way the cords of his neck stood out from all the dimensions and colors. He’d bitten Obi-Wan other places too, and wondered if his back was bruised, or his hip, or his wrist--or if they weren’t yet, if he could and what that would feel like. For both of them.

But it was pain. A Jedi does not undertake to harm a living being. A Jedi certainly does not take _pleasure_ in hurting a sentient. And here Anakin was already thinking about hurting Obi-Wan again, hurting him more, maybe letting Obi-Wan hurt him back if that would make up for it--or even if it didn’t--and Obi-Wan said he didn’t mind the pain, didn’t mind the bruises, but what does that even mean--and what if he’s lying--or just accepting it because it’s his job--

“Padawan Skywalker.”

Anakin looked up. Sometime during all that, Obi-Wan had come closer, not quite into Anakin’s space but definitely close enough to reach out and touch. The concern in his eyes, the _composure_ was hateful--how dare he be composed, when Anakin’s mind was trying to tear itself apart.

“Back off,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan obeyed. He retreated to his cushion, rearranged his robes. His eyes never left Anakin’s, and Anakin managed a few more shaky breaths before he could answer.

With a question. “What if I feel more than one thing about it?”

The smile on Obi-Wan’s jaw was small but somehow brilliant, all the way up to his eyes. “Can you isolate some of the feelings?”

Anakin nodded, a little too quick. A slight wave of vertigo pressed at his eyes, and he fought it down. “I feel like it must make me a bad Jedi. Like I failed some kind of test. We’re not supposed to feel good when other people are in pain, or enjoy hurting them ourselves. It’s not the Jedi way. You asked me that question, you made me think about it, but I feel like you already know the answer. So that’s pissed me off.”

Obi-Wan shut his eyes for a moment. “I apologize for that. I don’t know your answer, and I shouldn’t act as if I do. Your anger is justified.”

“You know, no Jedi has ever said that to me before.” It’s entirely possible that no _person_ had ever said that to Anakin before, but definitely never in the confines of the Order. Not even Qui-Gon.

“I’m not a Jedi,” Obi-Wan reminded him. “And you should still release that anger here, where it hurts no one else.”

“That’s just it, though. I...” Anakin took a gulp of air, and remembered the water, but didn’t break to drink it. “I did enjoy it. I liked it in the moment, and seeing the--results, now. And a part of me still wants to do that again. And more. And worse. And doesn’t that make me less of a Jedi? Taking pleasure in pain?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Not under the right circumstances. You’re right that it’s complicated. If anything, your conflicting impulses on the matter show you how complicated it can be. But like any desire, unless you let it rule you, it doesn’t make you less of a Jedi.”

“How does that even work? How do you not completely turn to the dark side, if you like hurting people!”

“Breathe, Padawan Skywalker. Find that control you had last night. I promise, we’ll find an explanation that works for you. Just breathe. With me.”

Anakin grit his teeth. And it took a few long moments of just listening, but eventually he closed his eyes. Counted his breaths. Steadied his heart. Thought of last night in the ‘fresher, keeping the Force at his will and Obi-Wan at his mercy, and feeling centered. Controlled. Powerful.

“Good,” Obi-Wan said. Anakin didn’t open his eyes, just listened, let that voice be a mantra. “I want you to think of the last time you sparred with your Master. The last time you bested him and got in under his guard. Have you ever wounded him in practice?”

“Yes.”

“Not seriously, I’m sure.”

“No. A burn on his left leg.”

“Walk me through your reaction to that knowledge. From the beginning to the end.”

“I was proud at first. Before I smelled the burn. I’d fought so hard to beat him, I’d trained that kata for weeks, and I proved to him that it would work. Then I noticed the singe. And saw him limp. And it felt terrible, but still--I was in awe. I felt awe. That I’d struck that deep. That I was stronger than him. And then I thought that I should have pulled the strike, that it was my fault.”

“Did he say so?”

“No, he...he laughed, sort of, and told me to bring a medkit and help him patch it up.”

“Do you think that it has negatively affected your relationship with your Master?”

“No. He hasn’t even brought it up since.”

“And you’ve kept sparring?”

“Yes.”

“With live sabers?”

“Yes.”

“Lightsaber combat between Jedi has clear and understood rules. Would you say that you and your Master are both interpreting them in the same way?”

“I think so.”

“And you’ve been burned a few times, I know, in the training salle. And the hangar, and the machine shop.”

Anakin opened his eyes and put two and two together. “Because I’ve accepted the risks.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Exactly. _Understood_ them, and accepted them. Anyone who faces a Jedi with a lightsaber accepts the risk of plasma burns. Anyone who gets into a cockpit accepts the risk of falling. And anyone who puts their pleasure in the hands of another sentient risks pain.”

“But sex isn’t supposed to hurt. You said so yourself.”

“It isn’t supposed to harm you, no. But bringing your body into contact with another always carries that risk. Not to mention putting your trust in another. Not all pain is physical. I swore I wouldn’t reject you or deny you, because I know that would hurt you a great deal. We established that from the start.”

Anakin nodded, and finally reached for that water glass. He needed it. Now. “So you’re saying that--oh. High risk, high reward.”

“Exactly.”

“Like moving from training sabers to real ones.”

“ _Yes._ If someone trades out a training saber for a real one, and the sparring partner doesn’t know, and therefore hasn’t accepted the risk, that’s despicable. But if both partners knowingly trade them out, and establish rules of engagement, it’s simply high risk, but mutual, and a deep strike should carry no ill will.”

Anakin took a long drink of water, and still came up parched.

“A Jedi does not wish harm to others. But you redefine the parameters of harm all the time: you’ve struck down enemies, and defended yourself and the innocent with lethal force. And you’ve practiced that lethality with those who understand the risk. If two people mutually redefine hurt and harm, I think there’s nothing there against the Code at all.”

“So you’re saying,” Anakin managed, “that it’s okay to want to hurt someone if someone wants to be hurt.”

“That’s the beginnings of it, yes. And other people may think differently. But I believe in my heart that there’s nothing wrong with that desire, nor with acting on it if all the people involved are willing and understanding.”

Anakin thought back to the pod-race that won him his freedom. There were a thousand times that day he could have died, and a half dozen other racers _did_. And he nearly killed Sebulba on that last lap, and felt nothing but triumph. But no one called him a killer for it, and he couldn’t be tried for murder even if he had remained on Tatooine, because everyone understood the rules. To race was to risk death. Anyone who ever climbed into a pod knew it, and anyone who sat in the stands accepted it.

“Have you ever wanted to hurt anyone?” he asked, just to get the focus off himself, for now.

Obi-Wan nodded. “Yes. And be hurt. And other things, as well.”

“Like what?”

Very seriously, Obi-Wan leaned forward, propping an elbow on his folded knee. “Like you, I enjoy being in control. It’s one of the reasons I do this. Occasionally, someone will cede so much control to me that I can restrict them or bind them. Or allow me to create new rules for them to follow. Or permit me to explore them beyond areas they’re consciously comfortable with.”

Anakin’s heart leapt up into his throat and kept beating. “Like on the first night.”

“Yes. Like we did for each other, the first night.”

He _remembered_ that thrill, the polar opposites of control. How amazing it felt when Obi-Wan watched him, when his nervousness and confusion eroded in the face of trust. How Obi-Wan looked beneath him, completely beholden to Anakin’s will, not even touching back--because Anakin hadn’t given him permission.

“I want to do that again,” Anakin said. “I want to do that, knowing what I’m doing this time.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “Which?”

“Both.”

“Which first, then?”

Anakin drained the rest of the water glass, and beat all the memories of Tatooine out of his mind. There were no slaves here. This wasn’t slavery. It could stop, at any time, if anyone wanted it to stop. Rules of engagement. Acceptance of risk.

He put the glass down. “I want you to cede control to me.”

Obi-Wan’s smile was bright and level. “I’m glad to. May I trust you to accept my personal rules?”

Anakin blinked. “Of course.”

“Thank you. Please confine all activity to this room and the ‘fresher, and don’t unshield the window. If you engage with the Force, no mind alterations or attempts on my memory. For safety’s sake, since it’s your first time, no blades or bludgeons, and don’t draw blood. And please don’t attack my neck tonight, I think it’s had enough.”

Startled into a laugh, Anakin tried desperately not to dwell on Obi-Wan’s ease at bringing up weapons and sex in the same few sentences. And failed. “Blades? Are you serious?”

“In that box, on the lower shelf. Have a look.”

Anakin clambered over to the shelf in question, and had a look. And promptly shut the box. And reopened it. And shut it again. “Not tonight,” he said.

Obi-Wan agreed, “Not tonight. Anything else, ask. Or do, and I’ll stop you if I don’t want it.”

“Just say no,” Anakin breathed.

Obi-Wan nodded. “I will. You can stop at any time, as well.”

Anakin didn’t plan to.

He set the box back in its place, and straightened to his full height. Obi-Wan remained seated, looking up at him, and Anakin found himself hardening at the implications. Obi-Wan, kneeling to him. Deferring to him.

Anakin ordered, “Take of your clothes.”

Obi-Wan did, without ceremony. His neck wasn’t the only place Anakin had bruised; dark stains stood out on his hip and upper back. He hadn’t treated those either. And Anakin could taste them all again. Obi-Wan was _his_ , for the night.

He used the Force to push Obi-Wan onto the bed. And pin him, spread on his back. Obi-Wan’s wrists strained against the invisible bonds, testing them, but Anakin’s mind would not yield. He looked into Anakin’s eyes, and Anakin read every challenge there, the way he would for any opponent.

Obi-Wan’s body was a course, laid out beneath him. Anakin came to the bed, reached down to trace his fingers over that skin, over the bruises he’d already left. Obi-Wan sighed at the touch, a high shuddering breath, so much shallower than meditation.

“Don’t meditate.” Anakin stooped to stroke the backs of his nails over the bite-mark on Obi-Wan’s hip. “I want you here. I want you to feel everything.”

“Yes.” Obi-Wan nodded, just enough to rustle the covers. “I will.”

Anakin sat on the edge of the bed. He was still wearing his robes-- _that_ was unexpectedly erotic, with Obi-Wan naked and spread for him--and he had to push his sleeves up to do what he wanted without blocking out Obi-Wan’s expanse of skin. And he _did_ everything he wanted to, touched and tasted everything, found all the places that made Obi-Wan shiver and gasp. The divot of his ribs. Behind his ear. The curve of his inner thigh, so close to his cock that Anakin could feel the heat coming off it in waves. Anakin bit him right where his leg ended and his groin began, and held and sucked until Obi-Wan screamed.

Obi-Wan couldn’t push himself off the bed. Couldn’t thrust. His muscles strained with nowhere to go except where Anakin _wanted_ him, and Anakin wanted him to let go again. To shout again. It was beautiful, more beautiful than anything in the galaxy but Padmé, and Anakin thought of giving himself to Padmé like this, showing her how much he belonged to her--the way Obi-Wan belonged to him, now.

He bit down on Obi-Wan’s other thigh. Differently, this time. A row of hard nips, not one mauling concentration. Just as effective. Obi-Wan yelled through grit teeth and a shaking jaw, and his cock leaked against Anakin’s cheek. Anakin fumbled into his robes to touch himself, because Obi-Wan couldn’t. He thought Obi-Wan might like to _know_ just how hard Anakin was, how much he loved this, and shifted so his shoulder bumped Obi-Wan’s thigh every time Anakin pulled.

Yes. Yes, Obi-Wan liked that. Anakin felt it in the Force itself, in the surge of desperation again his hold. 

One more bite, harder than the others, and Anakin looked up. “Ask.”

Obi-Wan’s hips twitched, with nothing to touch.

_“Ask,”_ Anakin repeated, letting his breath bead where his teeth had been, where Obi-Wan’s skin was a livid red, spiraling out from his swollen cock.

“Please!” Obi-Wan gasped, throat bare and taut.

It was the single hottest thing Anakin had ever heard.

Anakin could say no. He had all of the power here, all the right. He could delay, deny, ask for clarification, and even after that he could say no and leave Obi-Wan like this. Make him beg.

A wave of nausea coiled in Anakin’s gut, a mirror of the cold surge at the base of his brain. He remembered the ring of Masters, the day he came to the Temple, holding his life in their hands and telling him _no_.

Anakin straightened up enough to bow his head and take Obi-Wan’s cock into his mouth.

No one would be denied. Not here. Not anymore. He owed Obi-Wan that much, at least. And he wouldn’t deny himself either, not with what he wanted laid out for him and almost claimed.

_For the night,_ a shadow in the corner of his eye reminded him. _For five more days._

* *

Somehow, he managed to hold Obi-Wan down with the Force the whole way through. Through Obi-Wan pleading. Through both of them coming. Anakin had no idea how long it had been since this started but it felt like hours, and his heart was still skipping beats.

As soon as Anakin let him free, Obi-Wan’s hands came to rest on Anakin’s head, still pillowed on his bruised thigh. But there were no lectures, no admonitions. No lessons, just yet. Just breathing, and touch, and their presences in the Force. Connected, the way all things are connected.

Whether he slept or meditated, the next thing Anakin was aware of was an empty bed and sunlight through the shielded window; the hazy dawn of Coruscant climbing over the Temple walls.

* *


	4. Chapter 4

There was nothing in the rules that prevented Anakin from going to medbay. He’d checked. For one thing, it would be impossible to _prevent_ someone from going to medbay, especially if he needed it. And Anakin didn’t exactly need a doctor. Just an excuse.

So he came through the grand archway, past the screen of the sterile halls. Healers in white ran on their errands with their apprentices trailing behind. Anakin had never come here consciously before--a few training injuries, one nasty crash--and it couldn’t be said that he knew his way around, but there was a terminal along the back wall that Anakin assumed would show him where to go.

He keyed in Obi-Wan’s information. The machine gave him a location and no indication of emergency, and after a few queries an escort droid emerged from the wall to lead Anakin there. It prattled on about the mandatory use of the sterilizers and scanned Anakin for stars-only-know-what along the way, but eventually it led him to a ward, a hall of soundproof doors and monitored transparisteel windows. Convalescence, not surgery. Two or three names to a room. Cots with bucket-helmets propped beside them.

The Mandalorian refugees.

A peal of laughter rang out from one open door, a ways down the hall. The escort droid was already a length ahead of Anakin, almost to the bright square of light reflected onto the floor, and once it got there it turned and beeped a signal, and a very different, more familiar startled laugh sounded in reply.

“A moment, your Grace,” Obi-Wan said to whoever else was inside, and emerged from the patient’s room.

Anakin had no idea what to say. Obi-Wan looked...not different, exactly, but not the warm and open man that Anakin had come to know these last few nights. Freshly shaved, he seemed a few years younger; a scanner and multitool hung from his neck like a chain; the collar of his white robes was done high, no trace of skin visible until his face; his hair was slicked back and held with some kind of half-visor, like the hands-free comm units Anakin used when he flew his starfighter. And his eyes went wide as soon as he saw Anakin, which had _never_ happened before.

“Padawan Skywalker,” he said. It sounded just as strange and formal here as it did in that little room. Same measured tone. Same rough edge. Anakin remembered how Obi-Wan had screamed last night, how that body had felt under his mouth, trapped between him and the bed. “What can I do for you?”

_Touch me_ , Anakin thought, so loudly he could swear his mind rattled. 

Maybe the Force cast it to Obi-Wan, maybe it didn’t, but either way Obi-Wan didn’t react. So Anakin had to speak. With, still, no clear idea what to say. “I was curious,” he decided. “About what else you do.”

Obi-Wan nodded, though it was more like bowing. His hands came together. They were gloved. _Gloved_. It didn’t seem right. “You haven’t spent much time in medbay, then.”

“Not on purpose,” Anakin admitted. And it was as good an excuse as any to spend more time, here. With him. 

“Well, you’re more than welcome to stay and help. We need all we can get down here.” He smiled. And didn’t make a move forward, or reach out through the Force, or anything.

No. No this wasn’t _his_ Obi-Wan. He was holding himself back. Cutting himself off. Lying. Pretending.

Anakin rushed forward, already reaching for Obi-Wan’s cheeks to draw him closer. His fingertips brushed smooth, clean skin only for a moment before Obi-Wan backed off, gloved hands up in warning.

“Are you sure everything’s all right?” he asked, tentative, private.

“No,” Anakin said. He closed into Obi-Wan’s space until his chest met those warning hands. They didn’t waver. He looked down into Obi-Wan’s eyes and searched them, narrowed his senses on the Force around them to try and touch Obi-Wan’s presence.

There: a tendril of it. Concern. Confusion. The same questing essence he’d seen in that room from the start, but held back. No, not held back, suppressed. But the same steady breath ghosted Anakin’s lips, the same bright, open eyes asked him what he wanted most, right now.

_Obi-Wan behind him, on him,_ in _him, asking permission._

Anakin brought his hands up again, settled them on Obi-Wan’s jaw, and leaned in.

“Doctor?” the woman in the patient’s room asked.

Obi-Wan turned away at just the last second. Anakin got only the faintest taste of his cheek, his hairline, the heel of his own palm as Obi-Wan pulled away again.

“Just a moment, your Grace,” Obi-Wan said over his shoulder, as if Anakin wasn’t there.

Well, fine. He wouldn’t be. If Obi-Wan didn’t want him, he’d just _go_ and stop embarrassing himself. Anakin turned on his heel and stormed off, the escort droid wheeling behind him faster than its protocols ordinarily allowed.

Obi-Wan didn’t even call after him.

It was a testament to years of Jedi training that Anakin didn’t punch any walls until after he’d left medbay. It was likewise a testament that he destroyed four training dummies and left a lightsaber-score in the ceiling of the salle.

* *

Anakin had tea waiting when Qui-Gon returned from the Senate. Tea, and sliced fruit, and a mess in the kitchen.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” Qui-Gon said as he settled in, toeing off his boots at the door. He noticed the trail of rinds and dripping juice on the countertop, and raised an eyebrow, but came in all the same. “Any reason?”

“Long day,” Anakin said. He poured the tea. He’d already had four cups of his own in the past two hours, iced and sweetened, and they hadn’t stopped his heart from trying to break out of his chest like a caged rancor. 

Qui-Gon nodded considerately. He took the teacup, sloshed the tea around for a moment, then set it aside. And sat.

Anakin knew very well that his agitation was palpable in the Force. His Master could always tell. Not always why, and not always whether it was something to _help_ , but Qui-Gon always sensed the emotions of the moment. There had been times, in those early years, where he’d made a few insensitive suggestions, or where Anakin had responded in outright anger or even lashed out physically, but he and Qui-Gon had found their equilibrium eventually.

So Qui-Gon sat. And meditated, that settled, steeling way he had that almost made him disappear into the Living Force surrounding them. And Anakin could choose to join him, or not.

The last time they’d done this was after Anakin learned that he had missed his mother’s wedding. Two years ago or so, when they were scouting the Mid-Rim, they’d chased down a Dathomirian Force adept rumored to have ties to the Zabrak Sith who Qui-Gon killed on Naboo. It had taken them nearly half a year to corner and capture her, but she’d sabotaged their ship and escaped, and getting back to Coruscant took so many turns and jury-rigs and remote outposts that the time stretched thin. Anakin never even knew the wedding was happening until he saw it on the Holonet. There had been invitations waiting back at the Temple, months out of date. And Qui-Gon knew, but did not pry or force Anakin to meditate, just began on his own and waited, patiently, for his Padawan to join him and untangle the knot of his attachments.

Anakin took his time. He busied himself cleaning up the kitchen, making a last cup of tea for himself, anything but meditating. He knew he’d have to eventually, but every time he unfocused his eyes Obi-Wan was _there_ , breaking his promise, keeping his distance like a wary stranger. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. 

The door chimed.

Anakin looked at Qui-Gon, who, without breaking his trance, said, “Open.”

On the other side of the door was a small escort droid, bearing a flimsiplast note in one clamp. It crossed the threshold, only barely, and cheeped its message to Anakin.

_You are late,_ the droid admonished, waving the note. _If you are indisposed, I will convey your regrets._

Anakin snatched the note out of its clip.

_Padawan Skywalker: I wish to discuss our earlier encounter, and our experiences these last five nights. I apologize for my behavior in medbay and will explain it at your convenience. If you would rather not come tonight, I understand, but our time is limited._

_If you intend to dispense with this arrangement, Master Jinn knows the appropriate channels._

_-Kenobi_

Anakin crushed the flimsiplast in his hand and stormed out the door.

* *

An hour and a half late, Obi-Wan still let him in. “Padawan Skywalker,” he started to say, rising from the bed, but Anakin cut him off before the door could even close.

“You _lied_ to me!” Anakin charged right up to him and shoved him back onto the bed. This time, Obi-Wan didn’t just lie there and take it, didn’t defer, and sat right back up while Anakin got in his face. “You said you wouldn’t turn me down!”

“Padawan Skywalker, calm down.”

“No! No, you will _listen_ to me. No questions. No explanations.” Anakin grabbed him by the shoulders. The collar of his robes fell open. All the bruises were gone. Anakin’s gut wrenched, like the gravity had just doubled, and his hands tensed all the way up to his sockets. “You acted like you didn’t even know me. You backed away from me!”

“I was at work--”

“I said no explanations!” Anakin shook him, and when his hand slipped off he drew back for a punch--

\--and his arm froze. All of him froze. The Force bound him in place, paralyzed him completely, everything from his toes to his eyelids. Dust swam in front of his eyes.

Obi-Wan’s hand was raised, and eyes lidded, the Force with him. “Padawan Skywalker. I have not consented to violence. If you don’t get yourself under control I am authorized to call in the Temple Guards and powerful enough to hold you until they get here.”

No. No, he couldn’t be. Anakin had never met a layman stronger than him. No other Padawans could take him in a fight. He’d even bested Knights and won passes with Master Windu. Sure, some were better at levitation or sensing and some had mastered a particular saber form at the expense of others, but in a contest of Force-assisted strength Anakin had never been held down by anyone but a Master.

It wasn’t possible. And yet, Obi-Wan’s power overrode Anakin’s body and mind until something in him stopped firing. He couldn’t see. Could barely breathe. He knew that wasn’t the Force, that was himself struggling against it, but the pain was the same. His throat swelled and capillaries burst in his fist and the tendons of his neck and shoulder, and Obi-Wan sat placidly through it all.

“Must I call in the guard?” Obi-Wan asked.

Tears slipped down Anakin’s cheeks, into the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t stop them or hide them. Not now.

_No,_ he thought, as clearly as he could. He dropped his shields and let that word ring through the Force, threaded with as much contrition as he could. But without the walls in his mind the rest seeped through too: awe, and betrayal, and the bottomless well of Anakin’s fear.

Put in his place. Overridden. _Owned._

Obi-Wan let down his hand, and the Force retreated with it. Anakin gasped for breath and staggered, barely caught himself on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. The bed was too low to support him until he sank to his knees, and Obi-Wan peeled back, let Anakin’s face smother the mattress to hide what he hoped were the last of those shocked tears. Obi-Wan’s hand settled in Anakin’s hair, like last night, after, and no. No, those weren’t the last of the tears.

“How are you not a Jedi?” Anakin prayed it didn’t sound as much like a sob to Obi-Wan as it did to his own ears, but, too late. “You’re better than I am. How are you not a Jedi?”

His hand smoothed over the nape of Anakin’s neck, and he didn’t answer.

Anakin babbled, couldn’t help it, “I couldn’t find out why. I tried to look it up and the file said you passed your Initiates. I never even took them. I’m struggling with the Code and you follow it even though you don’t have to. You have control. You have devotion. The Council hates me and my Master nearly left the Order for choosing me and they still blame me for it. They say I have too much fear. Well, I do! Fear and everything else! I’m-- _crying_ , and I’m angry, and I spent last night hurting you and I still want to, and you’re so perfect, so _why?”_ His fist thudded onto the bed. The floor shook. “Why aren’t you a Jedi?!”

“Because I was never chosen,” Obi-Wan sighed.

When Anakin forced his face away from the covers and sat back on his haunches, Obi-Wan was looking down to him, but his eyes weren’t in focus. His chest rose and fell and his jaw went slack, and Anakin nearly teared up again.

He’d seen faces like that before: in the desert. Stranded, empty. Forlorn.

“I failed my first few attempts at the Trials,” Obi-Wan went on, his fingers gone still at the nape of Anakin’s neck. “The first time I tried, I definitely wasn’t ready. The second, I came at it from a place of spite and anger, and the Council could tell. I wasn’t a good youngling at all, Padawan Skywalker. I broke the rules. I was censured for fighting. I tried to bargain by way out of a thousand kinds of trouble. And after I failed my Trials a third time I still refused to leave the Temple. I fought with the Council. I found out that one of my crèchemates had sabotaged my third try, and when I revealed that they dismissed him and gave me one more chance. And I passed, but by then I’d made a name for myself and none of the Masters would have me.”

Anakin _stared_.

“I waited three years, and no one came.” His palm trembled, chilled against the sweat of Anakin’s skin. “They were going to send me to the AgriCorps, but I wouldn’t go. I’d never left the Temple except to go to Ilum for my crystal. I nearly failed there, too. And I knew that if I tried to leave the Temple, no matter how well I did, no matter _what_ I did, I’d still be a failure. So I begged the MediCorps to take me instead, and they accepted.” He drew his hand away, but it was still shaking when he settled it in a fold of his tunic. “I’ve been here ever since. I don’t know how to be anywhere else.”

If the Force itself hadn’t been swimming with Obi-Wan’s pain, Anakin would never have believed this. He straightened as much as he could, drew away from the edge of the bed to stay kneeling on the floor. He watched, helpless, as Obi-Wan’s eyes came into focus again, that faint sparkle of mischief now indelibly tinged with something Anakin refused to name.

He must have looked despairing, pathetic, because Obi-Wan leaned forward with a mask of a smile settled on his lips. “It’s not so bad, Padawan Skywalker. I wasn’t lying when I said I enjoy this life. I’ve found my way around it, and who knows what I might have become if the Force had a different intention for me? I serve, and I believe, and I’m still allowed to study the teachings and the Code and--”

“It’s not fair,” Anakin said. A simple truth.

“Few things are,” Obi-Wan nodded, and his head lingered low for a moment. A moment too long. He bit his lip, on the way up, and Anakin wanted nothing more than to reach over and smooth that indentation away.

And he knew he shouldn’t. _Wait. Respect._

“I was a slave on Tatooine,” he said, and kept his eyes steady so that when Obi-Wan looked up he’d see. Their eyes locked, Obi-Wan’s surprised and vaguely glassed, like Anakin’s still felt after those tears. “I don’t know if you knew.”

“I didn’t.” Obi-Wan shut his eyes, shook his head lightly. “I knew you came to it late, but not why.”

Anakin nodded, and got to his feet. He couldn’t tell this story kneeling. And he didn’t mean to pace, but wasn’t ready to sit. Or leave. He wouldn’t leave, now. “Not many people know. My Master, and the Council. That’s basically it. He found me, and he freed me and my mother, and he took me here. They said they wouldn’t train me, but he...” Anakin came to the window, shielded and fogged, and laid his palm on it. The cold raced up his arm, like a jumper cable shocking him back on course. “Anyway, he chose me. He said he’d train me even if the Council wouldn’t. And when his Padawan died on Naboo, they let him have me. Teach me,” he corrected, “they let him teach me. And here I am. I’ve never failed because they never tested me. Or maybe they just test me all the time, and never tell me if I pass or fail. But I’m still here, because of some bargaining. Some prophecy.”

“You’re here because the Force has brought you,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin glowered at him. _“Banthashit.”_

Obi-Wan laughed only once, pitching forward and palming his face like he had a headache. “Fair enough.”

“So I know how fair it isn’t.” Anakin ground his teeth, hissed in a long breath through them, and leaned his head against the window. He couldn’t see out of it, but he wasn’t trying. “If the Force was serious about wanting balance, it’d have chosen someone like you.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“Why not? It’s true. I’m...” He cringed, but the words came out all the same. “I’m not balanced.”

There was no releasing these emotions to the Force. Anakin _felt_ , and wouldn’t stop feeling. He pulled back from the window, just enough for the cool air of the room to streak his forehead. Obi-Wan was already looking at him, his Force-signature as steady and strong--and screened--as his eyes.

For the third time today, Anakin crossed into Obi-Wan’s space. For the first time today, Obi-Wan didn’t retreat. Anakin knelt down onto the bed, already wrapping his arms around Obi-Wan, already gathering him close. They hadn’t kissed very much these last nights, and it was still new, but once their lips met Anakin couldn’t believe he’d ever lived without this; without the scrape of Obi-Wan’s stubble, the warmth of his hands on Anakin’s cheeks, the urgent pressure of his breath. Anakin held on tight and tipped them both down to the covers, and Obi-Wan went willingly.

They didn’t take of their clothes. Anakin didn’t even kick off his shoes. They stretched out beside each other, kissing and touching until Anakin couldn’t take it anymore and folded his hand around Obi-Wan’s neck. The bruises were gone, but he could feel Obi-Wan’s pulse, pounding, hard.

“I’m sorry,” Anakin whispered.

Obi-Wan’s forehead nestled against Anakin’s. “I know.”

Their breathing matched, eventually, the way two people walking side-by-side will soon fall into step. Anakin curled close, his palm still against Obi-Wan’s throat, his face nestled in Obi-Wan’s hair. The copper haze blurred to red, and Anakin drifted into the Force, his free hand stroking Obi-Wan’s back until meditation, then sleep, overcame them both.

* *


	5. Chapter 5

The dead of night was cold on Tatooine. The chill came in stages: The suns set, and hours later the sands had no more light to reflect and lost their bend of heat. Some nights, Anakin would burrow into all his clothes and it still wouldn’t be enough to keep out the chill. He’d wake up in the mornings with his mother curled next to him, sharing all the warmth she could.

Most rooms on Coruscant were finely temperature-controlled, but there had been a few times in the field, and in space, where Anakin curled up with Qui-Gon the same way. But those were few and far between, and years ago. And these past five nights, he’d fallen asleep with Obi-Wan in the bed, but woke alone.

This time, he woke to Obi-Wan disentangling himself from Anakin’s robes. They’d never gotten under the covers, and Anakin’s feet were cramped from sleeping in his boots, but he felt so impossibly and blearily warm that any discomfort was completely irrelevant. A shadow crossed over Anakin’s face and once it passed he cracked open his eyes, and Obi-Wan was already on the way to the ‘fresher, stripping off his wrinkled robes as he went.

Anakin hauled himself out of the bed and followed. The sink was running, and Obi-Wan leaned over it, splashing his face and working a lather over his cheeks. As he straightened, he pulled a vibrorazor out of the sink drawer and readied it at his jaw. Anakin pressed himself against Obi-Wan’s back--Anakin was taller, not much, just the right height to tilt down and kiss him right on the ridges of his nape--and nuzzled into his hair.

“Don’t,” Anakin said, voice still thick with sleep. “I like it scruffy.”

“It’s unhygienic,” Obi-Wan said, but his reflection in the bathroom mirror held the curve of a smile, even as the vibrorazor ran next to it, scraping the lather away, leaving smooth pinked skin in its wake.

“Can’t be that bad. Other healers have beards.” Anakin wrapped his arms around him, wedged himself against Obi-Wan’s back. He smelled good, for the morning; faint sweat and soap and ozone, and something underlying, familiar. _That’s me,_ Anakin thought, the Force laughing with him, _he smells like me._

“Other healers don’t mind having to shampoo their faces until the hair gets wiry and stripped.” The vibrorazor hummed, and Obi-Wan carefully guided it down his jugular. “Better to have it a proper length or none at all.”

Anakin filed that away. He’d been shaving for a couple of years, and didn’t have to do it every day, what with his fair hair and skin that hid it well as long as he got some sun. “But it feels good,” he said, stupidly. He rubbed his chin against Obi-Wan again, trying to catch the scrape on his unshaven cheek--and coming away covered in lather.

Obi-Wan looked over his shoulder at that, and laughed, bright and sudden. Anakin reached up to his own cheek, and nose, both smudged white, and grimaced. But Obi-Wan touched him then, still laughing his free hand smearing the lather around Anakin’s cheek until their faces were mirror images, one side tan, the other white. Anakin tilted his face into Obi-Wan’s palm, tried to trap his hand against his shoulder, and Obi-Wan’s fingers twitched until his nails scraped Anakin’s skin, just a gentle but present touch that left four raised scores in the lather. Like a beast had fought there long ago. Anakin’s breath caught, then burst out as a faint moan.

“Later,” Obi-Wan whispered. “I have work. But you’re welcome to stay.”

“I have to go train.”

“I’ll give you the access code.” He patted Anakin’s neck, his hand still sticking with lather, and turned back to the sink to replenish what Anakin had rubbed away. “You’re welcome to anything in here. Datapads, holos, whatever’s in the conservator.”

Anakin nodded, sidled so he wasn’t in that awkward place half-behind Obi-Wan anymore, no longer looking at him in the mirror. “Let me guess, you’re in a hurry.”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

The word _Unfortunately_ had never given Anakin hope, until now. _Unfortunately_ meant Obi-Wan wanted to be here. Would rather be here than medbay. Would rather be with Anakin, teaching him, touching him. His heart pounded.

In the time it took Anakin to refocus his eyes, Obi-Wan finished shaving, and shooed Anakin out of the ‘fresher. Anakin leaned in first, told him, “You missed a spot,” even though it wasn’t true in the least, and kissed him. Their mouths were both morning-sour, but Obi-Wan kissed back and Anakin didn’t want to stop, and _didn’t_ stop until he needed to breathe.

“Later,” Obi-Wan repeated, firmer this time, a promise and a threat rolled into one.

* *

Pride was unbecoming of a Jedi, but stars above, Anakin was in _rare form_ today.

He launched himself into kata after kata, making a circuit of the entire salle once for every form. Remotes fell under his onslaught and walls of the room were singed from deflected bolts the time Anakin came to a stop. He called an extra saber to his left hand for Jar’Kai and whirled across the floor, taking out two remotes in the same arc. There was something to that, he thought, a way of integrating Ataru principles with Shien strength, something to take up with Master Windu later--but now, Anakin only had the eyes and the mind for this dance of instinctive destruction.

He’d never felt so calm. Never, in all his life.

His left saber guarded, fixed in his orbit, and the right spun double, so fast that the plasma blade fanned out around him, the air still sparkling with reflections and smoke. He split his mind, firm in meditation: a part to the Self, and a part to the Force. The left to guard, the right to strike. The left to bind, the right to touch. Here, and there, and one with the Force.

His blades crossed against the panel of the dummy control system, the way they would at a foe’s neck, forcing him to yield.

“Whoa,” a youngling gasped from the open doorway. “That is _so cool_.”

Anakin turned both sabers off and whipped around to face the door, panting. The youngling was a Togruta, probably female from the rounded curve of her montrals, with saucery eyes a darker blue than her thick striping.

She squeaked and trundled into the salle on a beeline for Anakin’s chest. “We’re not allowed to do Jar’Kai yet! Can you show me?”

“You just said you’re not allowed.” Anakin wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, but smiled. “Are you asking me to break the rules?”

“It’s not breaking the rules if you do it,” she said imperiously. “I just want to see.”

Before Anakin could answer her--and she had a point, a demonstration wouldn’t technically be out of line--Mace Windu came into view in the doorway, cranky and bald as ever. “Ahsoka, get back to the main hall immediately.”

“But Master Windu--”

“No buts, Ahsoka. Get going.”

The little Togruta pouted and hung her head, but bowed and scurried off. Mace remained in the door, stepping into the frame to nearly fill it. Anakin bowed as well, which he hadn’t done at first sight, but hey, that could be forgiven.

Mace nodded in return, just a diagonal tilt of his chin. “I’ve been watching you, Skywalker. Tell me: how would you describe that last pass?”

Anakin worried his lip, considering. “Trying to splice Ataru with Soresu. If one blade guards while the other is in motion, it’s got the strengths of both.”

“And the weaknesses,” Mace reminded him.

“Yeah, but those cancel each other out and the real issue is splitting attention. I think.”

“At least you’re thinking about it.” Crossing into the salle, Mace toed the remains of a fallen remote out of the way so he wouldn’t have to go around it, the hem of his overrobe kicking up scrap. “Any reason you’re giving Djem So a break?”

“I’m not,” Anakin admitted, “but I was just thinking. About splitting attention. And trying to get better at it.”

“It’s a change from what you did to your practice room yesterday,” Mace said. And before Anakin could contest that, or apologize, he wasn’t sure which, Mace went on, “And a good one.”

One of the sabers slipped out of Anakin’s palm. A little. He caught it. 

Mace folded his hands behind his back. “Once you’re off leave, come to me. I intend to test you for Form VII.”

Form VII. The unrestrained forms. Mace Windu’s most closely guarded lightsaber skills. He hadn’t even taught those to his own Padawans.

“How many more days leave do you have, Skywalker?”

Anakin blessedly didn’t sputter. “Four. Just four.”

Mace nodded. “Keep up this Jar’Kai study that you’re doing. If you have any success with it, I’ll see you on day five.”

_Better to explore the nuances here than with a saber in your hand,_ Obi-Wan echoed in Anakin’s mind, a memory of balance, of true self-control.

Even after Mace left, Anakin’s heart was still up in his throat.

* *

Anakin took two tries with the access code. On the second, he opened to the empty room--and still didn’t know what to call it, but _Obi-Wan’s place_ wasn’t technically true and everything else sounded crass--just as he’d left it this morning. He had six hours before his appointment time, at least five before Obi-Wan got here, and a lot to explore.

He showered first. The time he and Obi-Wan had been in here together, there’d been an access panel in the wall for the soap and lubricant, and Anakin left the water running while he catalogued the contents. He took note of any paraphernalia that wasn’t clearly labeled, but the ones that were--salt exfoliant, water-activated bacta, junradish extract, temperature-variable lubricant--he tested out on his arm one at a time, learned their scents and sensations. He liked the scrape of the exfoliant, rubbed a palmful on his cheeks and the back of his neck and thought of Obi-Wan’s stubble. The water made him sting, but _stars’ end,_ he was hard.

He finger-fucked himself against the ‘fresher wall and the temperature-variable lubricant kicked in so suddenly that he thunked his head on the tile. It flashed hot and cold up his insides, twice as powerfully as it had on his arm, and he screamed into the crook of his elbow. So good. So strange. It opened him up enough for three fingers one second but contracted him around them the next, and he could only imagine what that would be like with something thicker inside him, sturdier, exploiting the powerful rhythm of his body--he came, hard, and it didn’t let up. He withdrew his fingers as soon as he could and held himself up under the shower spray, and everywhere the hot water hit a cold pang followed. His skin was alive. His _body_ was alive.

He wondered how long this would last. How long his ass would stay loose and ready. If Obi-Wan could come back and just plunge into him, no wait, no meditation.

_Please, fuck, yes._

Even after he got out of the shower, Anakin was still feeling the temperature shifts inside. They’d faded enough that he could dry himself without wanting to jerk off immediately, but still pulsed through him. He didn’t bother putting his clothes back on, just left the ‘fresher for the bed and flopped onto his back. The ceiling lights hummed, and the Force was warm and living, and Anakin let his eyes roll back in his head and dozed.

All the soreness from his morning exercises seeped out of him. He still couldn’t believe it: Mace Windu, the High Council member Anakin thought resented him the most, complimented him on his skills and offered to teach him. Inconceivable. There was probably some Council matter at the heart of it, some power play or attempt at leveraging Qui-Gon, but even then Mace wouldn’t make an offer that he couldn’t justify. Anakin knew he was good and getting better, and that the matter of the Chosen One was at the center of everything the Council thought about him, but he’d only been back at the Temple for seven days and done nothing of note.

Or had he? No classes or studies, sure. But he’d meditated more in the last six nights, and in so many different ways, that his Force signature was probably changing. Visibly. And he certainly felt centered, more than he ever did within the Temple walls. When it was just him and Qui-Gon out in the black, or Anakin alone in a fighter cockpit or a complex mechanical system, he could dismiss the expectations and tensions of this hallowed place. If he had to be completely honest with himself--which he supposed he did--there weren’t many places that Anakin felt the kind of oneness and selflessless that Qui-Gon described as the pinnacle of meditation. Anakin could count his transcendent experiences on one hand. Once, in his starfighter, boomeranging on a planet’s orbit with no fuel and trusting the Force completely. Once, fighting Ventress to save Qui-Gon’s life.

The other three were Obi-Wan. The second night. The fifth. And last night, in the moment before sleep.

Anakin knew that what they did in here was calibrating him. Centering him. _Balancing_ him, in a way he couldn’t balance himself. And now it was something that other people could see.

The light stung his eyes but only a little. He sank back down to the covers--he’d been meditating without realizing it, hovering a few inches off the bed’s surface. That had _never_ happened to him before.

His body still thrummed with something, not just the raw pleasure that had filled him in the ‘fresher or the happiness of Mace’s recognition. Anakin opened his palms, spread them on the silk coverlet, and breathed. He still had hours before Obi-Wan got here. He could experiment on his own. Obi-Wan had encouraged as much, this morning. 

That hope from before--of making himself ready for the moment Obi-Wan walked in the door--fixed in Anakin’s mind, a clear objective. A personal test. Staying power, self-control, awareness, and Force use, all rolled into one. Obi-Wan would be proud, Anakin thought. And when he got back Anakin would make him prouder, would yield to him and trust him and offer up everything.

He was already off the bed and kneeling by the datashelf when his heartbeat caught up with him.

* *

It worked.

When Obi-Wan opened the door, Anakin was waiting. Naked. Kneeling, in the center of the bed, hands flat to his thighs, eyes half-closed. The only motion he gave away was the slow stroke of his thumbs, never high enough to touch himself but a constant reminder. He’d waited. He’d been some degree of hard for an hour and hadn’t gotten off in four, no matter the thoughts in his head.

He didn’t need Obi-Wan to send him images. He had fantasies of his own. Some old, enhanced. Some new. He’d called every holo of Padmé to mind and threaded them with what he now knew, of sex, of his capabilities, of his wants. He’d gone through three of Obi-Wan’s datapads and envisioned himself in those positions, those scenarios. He’d looked into the box again and closed it, knowing better that he wanted skin against skin and none of the tools, but left the box out because if Obi-Wan wanted to he’d try it, he’d yield. And he’d stretched himself again with the temperature-variable lubricant from the ‘fresher, this time without coming. With his breath steady and his mind open to the Force. With the promise of something better. Something more.

“Oh,” Obi-Wan murmured, an echo of the door sliding shut. “Padawan Skywalker.”

Anakin had planned what to say. It took more breath than he had to spare, a false start as the sight of Obi-Wan and the anticipating heat inside him flared up together. “I know what I want,” he managed. As calm as he could. As open as he could. “I want to show you I trust you. I want you to touch me and challenge me. I want you to see how much I’ve learned.”

Through the Force, he felt Obi-Wan come nearer. He saw the blinding white of his healer’s robes, of his presence and his power. A hand reached down to frame Anakin’s chin but he didn’t lean into it, not yet. Proof. His strength. And his vulnerability.

“And what don’t you want?” Obi-Wan said, his voice as warm and near as his hand, just out of reach.

“Don’t bind me. Don’t hit me. And don’t send me away.” His fingers stuttered on his skin as a pang of cold raced into him, and his breath fell out of synch but didn’t break. “Everything else is yours.”

The mattress dipped. Obi-Wan knelt with him, their faces level but still not touching. “You will say no if I do anything you don’t want.”

“Yes.”

“And you will tell me what else you’ve done this afternoon before we start.”

Anakin nodded. This, he hadn’t expected, but he could hold on long enough to remember. “I’ve, um. I’ve showered twice. I got myself ready. I read a few of your manuals and I tried not to jerk off, and I’ve been meditating for about three hours.”

“You didn’t take anything? Or drink anything?”

“No. Sorry. I didn’t know that’s what you meant.”

When Obi-Wan nodded, the fringe of his hair tickled Anakin’s forehead and a full-body shudder rushed down to his core. Obi-Wan’s presence pushed against his awareness and Anakin lowered his defenses to the Force, let Obi-Wan in. He was his. He could show it, here.

“I want it in words too,” Obi-Wan said, firm but close. “Do you consent to my taking full control?”

The Force enveloped Anakin, spiraled in and out like the slick emptiness inside him. He didn’t move except to rein in the surge of heat to his cock, and breathe, and answer. “Yes. I consent.”

When Obi-Wan touched him, the world imploded. His fingertips traced Anakin’s jaw and that was all that existed, all that mattered. They trailed Anakin’s trachea to his chest, between the dip of his pectorals, stopping just under his ribcage like they could reach in and direct the beat of his heart. “Very well,” Obi-Wan said, with all the caress of a whisper but loud, but everything. “Hold out your hands.”

Anakin obeyed. Obi-Wan had promised not to bind him, so when something touched his wrist he startled and opened his eyes, but Obi-Wan wasn’t holding a rope or a cuff. He poured a handful of G-5 bacta capsules into Anakin’s upturned palms; twenty or so, each about the size of a thumbnail but delicate and spherical and clear.

“Hold these without crushing them,” Obi-Wan explained. “For each one that breaks, I will stop touching you for five minutes. For each one that drops, ten. You may use the Force instead of your hands if you wish. Do you understand?”

Anakin nodded, too choked on heat to speak. He’d used these before in the field; G-5s were designed to dissolve with the slightest bit of pressure. He’d have to be careful. But he could do it. And he would.

With that done, Obi-Wan circled to kneel behind him and stroke his hair, his shoulders. Priming him. Waking up his skin. Anakin realized, distantly, under the wall of pleasure, that no one else had touched him all week. No one since he’d hugged Qui-Gon in the elevator, before this even started. No one but Obi-Wan. He moaned and his palms tensed around the capsules, too much pressure--but nothing broke. Nothing yet.

Obi-Wan carded his fingers in Anakin’s hair, traced down his sides, leaned in and drew his tongue over Anakin’s spine one bone at a time. No matter how much Anakin’s hands shook, he kept them loose. He couldn’t trap the sobs in his throat. Maybe he didn’t want to. Obi-Wan’s mouth was searing, gentle, and a day’s growth of beard scratched Anakin’s back in harsh perfect counterpoint. As soon as he reached Anakin’s waist Obi-Wan straightened again, breathed on all the skin he’d laved and settled his lips right between Anakin’s shoulders.

And bit. Hard.

Anakin should have expected it, but stars, he hadn’t, and a shock raced through his muscles on the heels of an animal cry. Too late--his hands were sticking and the smell of bacta permeated the sweat on the air.

“How many?” Obi-Wan asked, over Anakin’s shoulder.

Anakin looked down into his palms. Both hands were cool, coated. “Two. I think.”

“Then, ten minutes.” Obi-Wan withdrew from the bed altogether, gathered himself onto a meditation cushion and settled in. “How are you feeling, so far?”

Anakin groaned, doubling over his cupped hands, but refusing to drop or crush any more of them. If that wasn’t an answer, he didn’t know what would be.

Obi-Wan smiled and huffed a bright laugh, looking up at him from the floor. “Your restraint is commendable. You’re doing well, I assure you.”

“But I--broke them.”

“But you’re still playing,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “And it’s a penalty for me too. Do you know what you look like, Padawan Skywalker? Do you have any idea how much of a pleasure it is to touch you? To feel you react to me?”

Anakin’s blood pounded through him like a riot.

“No, I don’t suspect you do.” Obi-Wan shut his eyes, stilled his breathing. “Well, why don’t I show you, as long as I can’t touch you yet?”

“What--”

_The taste of his own sweat._

Heat flooded his body, from the furnace at the base of his brain.

_A shiver under his fingertips, a body pushing itself into his touch, unselfconsious and wanton._

_Himself, kneeling on the bed, open. Waiting. Offering._

Anakin folded over, his heart in his throat.

“Eight more minutes,” Obi-Wan said, and sent him a vision for every one of them.

Time lost meaning. The bruise between his shoulders grew and throbbed like a second heartbeat. His cock was red and swollen and impossible to ignore, burning like the corners of his eyes.

Obi-Wan climbed up behind him again and went back to work. Soothed him. Told him he was beautiful, tenacious. Kissed the bruise, then clamped his teeth over it and sucked until Anakin shouted, barely managing to keep his hands from crushing all the capsules between them. This was what it felt like, he realized. For Obi-Wan, when Anakin went to town on his skin. It was somewhere beyond pain, somewhere higher. Like a shock of adrenaline straight to the heart.

It wasn’t the first place Obi-Wan touched, nor the last. Obi-Wan explored him like he had all the time in the world, testing all the new ground with a thousand textures. Stroking, lightly. Pinching. Scraping. Trapping flesh between his teeth. Scoring deep with his thumbnail right under Anakin’s hip until he nearly came and dropped a capsule onto the covers. The next ten minute penalty stretched out for what felt like hours while Obi-Wan bombarded him through the Force with phantom sensations, images of what they might do next, the recursive layering of Anakin’s feelings through Obi-Wan’s nerves and back.

Anakin couldn’t kneel upright anymore. He pitched onto his elbows and knees, his face plastered to the covers in a pool of his own sweat. Obi-Wan came to him again, took him under the chin and lifted, carefully. The capsules remained in Anakin’s hands, cradled no matter how hard he trembled.

“Will you continue?”

Not can. Will. He knew that Anakin could. Trusted that he was strong enough, ready enough. Anakin felt it through the Force between them, that surety, that confidence. That want.

Anakin looked him in the eyes--grey, crystalline--and mustered all his breath for an unambiguous “Yes.”

Gently, too gently, Obi-Wan leaned in to kiss him. Anakin turned up his lips but Obi-Wan pressed the kiss to his forehead instead, landing right between the eyes. Anakin hoped that needy whine wasn’t coming out of him, but didn’t have to hope long: Obi-Wan’s second kiss was square on Anakin’s lips and stopped him up. When he pulled back, Anakin fell silent, staring through the haze.

Obi-Wan took off his robes and let them puddle on the floor. He wasn’t naked under them this time, but fixed that in short order. His skin shone, all the colors of the desert, a sheen of sweat gathering into the raw red heat of his cock. Anakin felt his lips go dry again, licked them, gathered all the taste he could.

The way Anakin knelt, all Obi-Wan had to do was step forward. Present himself. Anakin saw a few faded bruises spackling Obi-Wan’s inner thighs and leaned in to lick them. Scraped his teeth on them. Reminded them whose they were. His cock was _right there_ up against Anakin’s cheek, and he tasted so good, so right--

Obi-Wan caught his chin, held him in place. “Tell me you want this.”

Anakin clenched his fists in frustration. Capsules burst on his palms.

The snap-stench of bacta careened up Anakin’s nose, pooled in his sinuses as his eyes went wide. Obi-Wan let go of him in an instant, and stepped back, hands at his side and cock still hard and delectable. “How many?”

“I’m sorry--”

“It’s all right. How many?”

Panting, chest heaving, Anakin hung his head and checked. “Four. Fuck, _fuck_ , I’m sorry.”

Obi-Wan nodded, but this time he didn’t sit down. He stood, filling Anakin’s sight so Anakin didn’t have to crane his neck to look. “Will you continue?” he asked again, because that was more important.

“Yes, yes, just--I’ll get it right this time, I promise.”

“I know. I know you will.” Obi-Wan’s voice was smooth but not smug, his body slack. “But I intend to follow through. Twenty more minutes. You can do it, Padawan Skywalker. I know you can.”

Carefully, Anakin lowered his cupped hands to the mattress with the remaining capsules, shining on his skin. “Do I have to stay kneeling?”

“No, not at all. Lie down if you like, give your legs a rest.”

Anakin nodded on the way down, sprawled on his front and then rolled over gingerly, holding the capsules between his hands like a fragile insect. He shut his eyes so he didn’t have to look at how swollen he was, how taut and painful his cock looked tipped against his abdomen.

“Breathe,” Obi-Wan commanded. “With me.”

Anakin did. Again. Then again. The pattern formed, breath by breath, like Obi-Wan was breathing _for_ him. Nothing touched Anakin but the covers and his own sweat, but he felt his body pulsing at another’s will, like a ship must feel with its flight system on auto. It went beyond guiding to subsuming. Anakin floated among the stars, motionless and open, holding another universe in his hands.

Twenty minutes passed like a single exhale.

Obi-Wan’s hand rested atop Anakin’s, a point of anchorage. He helped Anakin back to his knees, cradling him so he didn’t drop or break any more capsules, and Anakin sank into Obi-Wan’s arms like he’d found a new center of gravity. Cool hands and gentle kisses threaded over and under his skin, and the urgency hadn’t gone away at all but Anakin couldn’t move. Couldn’t think to. 

Bright eyes searched his, and Anakin followed the best he could. “Will you continue?” Obi-Wan asked, for the third time.

The answer was still yes. Meditation had left him empty--no, not empty. Bereft. Something was missing, was outside him, and Anakin needed it back.

He raised his hands, open enough to show Obi-Wan the remaining capsules. They passed under Anakin’s shadow, glinted wet in the room’s low light.

This time, when Obi-Wan stood up, he didn’t let Anakin lean in; he crossed around behind him, knelt on the bed. His hand trailed down Anakin’s spine into the cleft of his ass, and Anakin kept still, fought down the shivering and focused all he had on the delicate capsules in his hands. He wanted it, _stars_ he wanted it all, and when Obi-Wan’s fingers found him wet and still mostly stretched, still pulsing with brief shifts of heat and cold, they gasped, together. Anakin took three from the start and Obi-Wan breathed his praises right into Anakin’s ear. He whispered, his awe and his pride almost tangible in the Force even if Anakin couldn’t make out any of the words.

Obi-Wan guided him up higher, knelt beneath him, framed him from behind. Like Anakin was those capsules, precious in Obi-Wan’s hands. He slid in like he belonged there, in all the empty places inside Anakin. He filled them. Filled _him_.

When Anakin came, it was wild and sudden, inevitable, and Obi-Wan fucked him through it. Like he’d always been there. Like a sun had gone nova and the galaxy went on, accepting the fire and the outcry. Anakin broke apart and back together a thousand times in an instant, everywhere but his hands. Not his hands. They weren’t his anymore. They belonged to the galaxy, to Obi-Wan, to the fragile things they carried, because without them all of this would stop and Anakin wanted it to go on forever.

Maybe it could. Maybe if he never let the capsules fall he could stay on this bed, in this moment, with Obi-Wan inside him. Forever. He could. He wanted to.

Heat flooded him from the inside out. Obi-Wan went stiff behind him, plastered to his back, his mouth caught warm and wet at the top of Anakin’s spine, right on the bruise. “Padawan Skywalker,” Obi-Wan murmured, one rasp of his voice carrying all the pride in the world. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Anakin said, without thinking, “Master.”

_Master._

The world came back to him with that mistake; the Temple, the room, the reason they were in it.

And how they’d gotten here.

Open to the Force, there was no way for Anakin to stop the avalanche of fear. It wasn’t perfect. It was temporary. Obi-Wan wasn’t his Master, wasn’t a Jedi at all, wasn’t here because he wanted this. Anakin wasn’t his. Anakin wasn’t anybody’s. Master meant something else, something it hadn’t since before Anakin became a Jedi. But here he was, ass-up in a bed he’d made, after a day making himself ready, kneeling, waiting--wanting to give himself to someone else--letting another person tell him what he could and couldn’t do--

Anakin crushed all the remaining capsules in his hands, pulverizing them on the covers.

“Padawan Skywalker--”

“No!” Anakin slammed his fist down. The bed shook. Everything shook. He tried to keep himself from screaming but once that one word was out, he couldn’t stop his voice, and that was shaking too--he was so _weak_ , he’d learned nothing, gotten nowhere. 

He was a slave. He’d never been anything else. He never would be.

Something touched his shoulder and Anakin swatted it away. His skin chilled and he curled up around himself, but that didn’t help either. Sand blasted his throat and he realized he was still choking out sobs, unable to take a breath without it coming out seething. Every knuckle, every tendon in him shook like a leaf in a storm.

The bed dipped beneath him, beside him. Anakin wrenched his eyes open, and there was Obi-Wan, an arm’s length away, eyes wide in shock and concern. Anakin swore he could see the stars in his pupils, dilated so wide there was only a thin rim of silver. He could get lost in there. If there was any left of him to lose.

Obi-Wan said nothing. Commanded nothing. Just breathed. It was a signal, an option, still a choice. Like Qui-Gon, settling into meditation when Anakin’s emotions boiled over. Anakin glared at him, too parched to speak, but Obi-Wan didn’t look away, didn’t move.

He was waiting too: for Anakin. Like Anakin had waited for him, all afternoon. It made no _sense_. Obi-Wan could still be in control, could still own him and use him, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even touching Anakin anymore. But he hadn’t left. Maybe he just wasn’t done. Maybe he still had plans for Anakin. Maybe that’s why Anakin couldn’t move except to shiver.

Or maybe it was the weight of the Force, draping around him like a blanket, tentative but inexorable. Obi-Wan’s presence canvassed him, a query. Another question. That’s all this moment was, a question. _Are you all right? Will you continue?_

_Do you still trust me?_

But two things were immediately clear, neither of them an answer. One, that the answer was Anakin’s to give. And two, that Obi-Wan was completely, and genuinely, unsure of what to do. 

Anakin’s mouth dried, but the words still came out, coarse and raw. “I’m weak.”

Obi-Wan’s face fell. “No. No, not at all.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

The covers shifted as Obi-Wan shook his head. “Do you want me to guide you through it?”

“Yes. And no.” Anakin scrunched his eyes shut. “That’s the problem. If you decide for me it makes it better and then worse and I don’t know. It shouldn’t feel good. I should be stronger than that.”

“Stronger than what?”

Anger swelled and fizzled in Anakin’s chest, tendrils passing into the Force like a desert haze. He couldn’t say it. He’d said it last night and couldn’t say it again, if he did it would be true. He cringed forward, and his head bumped Obi-Wan’s chest. 

“Oh,” Obi-Wan whispered, in the space between heartbeats.

Anakin clutched at the covers, hands still sticky with bacta and sweat.

“Do you have any idea how brave you are?”

Anakin looked up, the best he could. “Brave? How?”

Obi-Wan’s hand settled on top of Anakin’s, but he made no other move closer. “No one else I’ve taught has faced what you faced. No one else at this Temple has been through what you have. That you trusted me--that you came to me, _knowing_ that I have no way of feeling what you’ve felt--and you let me do something that you yourself were afraid of no matter how much you wanted it--that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not even sure I know what to say. Let alone, do.” His breath caught, and Anakin wanted to start it back up again, wanted to reach inside him and find the thing that caused that stutter and crush it in his fist. “I’m amazed, by you. And honored. And I want you to know that what you’ve done tonight was....”

Either the Force was playing tricks on him, or Anakin caught the sheen of a gathering tear in Obi-Wan’s eye. The moment passed, and Anakin couldn’t look anymore, and buried his face in Obi-Wan’s chest.

“May I hold you?” Obi-Wan asked.

Not _is this all right?_ Not _what do you want?_ A question that required permission, not an answer.

“Yes,” Anakin said, with all the voice he had left.

* *


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters to go after this! I may write more in this universe, may not, but I am super thankful for all of your enthusiasm!

_Padawan Skywalker,_ the note in the morning read:

_This morning, in particular, I am sorry to have to leave you for work. On the one hand, I suspect you might not want to wake up alone, but on the other I know_ you need rest, and that certainty leads me to hope you’ll be all right. Either way, I promise that if you choose to come down to medbay to find me today, for anything, I will make myself available as long as I am not with a patient. If I take too long to see you, I recommend consulting with Master Luminara, but I’m honestly unsure what else I can do.

_Which is, I think the crux of the matter: I want you to understand that what you’re experiencing hasn’t put me off at all, but I don’t know how qualified I am to address it. I don’t want to impose anything on you, but I’ll be the first to admit that I have an understanding of the world that is incomplete at best, so I must ask you to tell me what you need, if you can. You are an extraordinarily brave young man, and I want to live up to the trust you’ve placed in me. I fear I can’t do that without a better understanding of your needs, and that I have failed you somehow. If you would rather not come to me in medbay, we can discuss this tonight; if you’d rather not discuss it at all, that’s all right as well. But please understand that I want you to feel secure, but also to learn and heal and push your boundaries so that you can understand yourself. You cannot force yourself to overcome these obstacles quickly and expect the healing to be complete, any more than you can run on a broken leg. That you have entrusted me to be your guide--or perhaps your crutch--is an honor I hope I can live up to._

_I hope that I will see you, if not today, tonight._

_-Kenobi_

Anakin traced his fingers over the note. Minutes later, he folded it reverently and tucked it into the pocket of his robes.

An hour later, it was secreted in the same drawer in Anakin’s room that held his years of correspondence with his mother, tucked in the back left corner.

He stood, hands resting on the rim of the open drawer, for a long time.

* *

If it hadn’t been for Master Windu’s praise yesterday, Anakin might not have bothered with saber training. But he’d insisted, and it was an honor, and Anakin had no idea where else to go. Medbay was, ironically, a double-edged sword; he knew Obi-Wan wouldn’t reject him coming, but he wanted to be strong, and Obi-Wan himself admitted that he didn’t know what to do.

No one did. Anakin least of all.

The Jar’Kai study wasn’t going as fluidly as yesterday. Anakin grit his teeth and blocked as many of the remotes as he could, but shots kept ricocheting too close to his eyes for him to catch with the off-blade. Three failed passes and he called them off, throwing the extra saber to the ground and snarling.

“Easy, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said from the door. How he’d snuck in, Anakin would never know. “Balance your power.”

Anakin scoffed. “Easier said than done.”

“I know.” Qui-Gon came nearer, retrieving the dropped saber and extending it back to Anakin. “What are you trying to do?”

Anakin explained the encounter with Mace Windu yesterday. Qui-Gon doubtlessly knew what Anakin wasn’t saying--about last night, and its complications, and the boneless pall that was hanging over Anakin and threatening to bury him--but Qui-Gon didn’t pry, and accepted the training exercise without any further questions.

Instead, he uncoupled his saber from his belt, and waved all the remotes off the floor. “Show me,” he said.

Anakin turned the sabers back on, and accepted.

Free-sparring with Qui-Gon was never simple at all. Never predictable. Never surmountable. For all his Master’s great size and steady features he and the Ataru Form were a perfect match. Qui-Gon’s strikes could come from anywhere, anytime, too fast to block and powerful whether he pulled them or not. From the outset Anakin had to cross his sabers to block from overhead and then shove out of the way of a second flash. Qui-Gon drove him back across the salle, blow after blow, and Anakin’s form fell apart.

His back met the wall. Qui-Gon withdrew. “Back to the center. Again.”

The second pass wasn’t any better. Having his sabers _designated_ left him searching for openings with one hand and blocking with the other--and there were openings, but Qui-Gon was fast enough to swipe them.

“Don’t split your focus,” Qui-Gon warned, on the heels of a devastating backhand.

“Jar’Kai,” Anakin snapped.

Qui-Gon’s eyes glinted in the halo of the three crossed sabers. “Two swords, still one focus. I’m the only one you’re fighting.”

“But you’re--”

Another blow hammered down from the left, and it was all Anakin could do to dodge. “Do you focus on blinking when you fight?” Another, from due right. “Or making your heart beat?”

Anakin narrowly blocked the second strike with his off-hand and sprang into a kata--which Qui-Gon interrupted halfway through with another barrage. And Anakin couldn’t spare the time to think, let alone answer. The pass drove him to the wall again, which he only found out when his wrist flung out and smacked it. He didn’t drop the saber, but it was a near thing.

Qui-Gon powered his off, filling Anakin’s space without a single step forward. “Don’t fight against what’s happening naturally.”

“Easy for you to say,” Anakin panted. Both sabers still lit, he gathered himself together and stormed to the center of the room, ready for another pass.

“Yes,” Qui-Gon admitted, and didn’t join Anakin there, “and difficult to do. Your instincts tend not to account for defense. Half-defense is even harder.”

“That’s why I’m _trying_ \--and if you start quoting Master Yoda at me, Force take it--”

Qui-Gon laughed, throat high. “I won’t. You’ve succeeded in splitting your attention. But when you’ve split it between two diametrically opposed ideas....” He trailed off, deliberately, and let Anakin fill in the rest.

_You get nowhere._

“That’s not true,” Qui-Gon said, Anakin’s thoughts clear to him through the Force. “Think of it like the pilot I know you to be, Anakin. There is a third axis.”

“Forward,” Anakin whispered. “In time.”

Qui-Gon nodded, but Anakin already felt the clouds of doubt and fear crossing his mind.

_What if I don’t want to go forward in time?_

* *

Anakin had the access code, so he let himself in. Whatever else he expected to see, he was graced with Obi-Wan by the conservator, mixing himself something to drink. He looked up; not shocked, but not the same immaculate smile and bow Anakin had grown accustomed to. Eyes just barely too wide, lips just parted enough to evoke something else.

“Padawan Skywalker. You’re early.”

“Not that early,” Anakin said as the door skidded shut behind him. A quarter-hour, at most. “And you said I could come find you anytime.”

“I did,” Obi-wan admitted, an amused half-curl to his lips, like the twitch of a lothcat’s tail. He raised his glass, ice clinking. “Would you like to share?”

Whatever he was drinking looked good--a cloudy liquor Anakin couldn’t immediately identify, but the sort of thing he’d expect to see on a visit to Serenno or Naboo, or in the skies over Hoth--but Anakin remembered last night, how Obi-Wan had hesitated when he thought Anakin might have drunk something. Anakin didn’t want anything to get in the way tonight either. “No, thanks, just water.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “Do you mind if I do? I’ve had something of a day.”

Anakin meant to say _go ahead_ , but “That bad?” came out first instead.

“Not bad, just new.” Evidently taking that for permission, Obi-Wan sipped his drink and then set it down, to gather Anakin’s taller glass of water together. “Getting the Mandalorians together to ship out.”

The tap shut off, and he held the glass out to Anakin, who crossed to him to take it. He couldn’t help holding his fingers over Obi-Wan’s, long enough for condensation to blend between their hands. Obi-Wan’s was the first to tense, and the glass might have slipped if Anakin didn’t let him pull away and take the glass’s weight.

“About last night,” Anakin said, because whatever else the Council said, they were full of shit on the _see in you much fear_ front.

Obi-Wan nodded again, waiting.

Anakin took a gulp of water, then started again. “I’m sorry I freaked out, after.”

“No, there’s nothing to be--”

“ _Yes_ ,” Anakin cut him off. “It’s like what you said, about training sabers. I broke the rules of engagement. I brought in something you didn’t expect.”

“You can’t have known you’d react that way, and even if you did I might not have been prepared. You didn’t break any rules, and you don’t have anything to apologize for. And you did attempt to prepare me, two nights ago, which was all you could have done.” Obi-Wan raised the glass to his lips, but smiled over the rim, more to himself than Anakin. “If we’re continuing the dueling metaphors, it’s as if you’re trying to apologize for a third party interfering. Or for striking a pipe in the ceiling and getting us both drenched.”

Anakin laughed, a little. “Sounds like you know that one from experience.”

“You’d be amazed.” Now, Obi-Wan sipped. Slowly, like the liquor needed to breathe on the way down. “I’ll accept your apology in the spirit you gave it, but I don’t think you have any cause to be sorry.”

“Okay.” Anakin backed up a few steps into the room proper. The cushions weren’t laid out on the floor yet, still piled in the corner, so he sat on the edge of the bed, water glass folded in his hands. “Then I don’t think you have to apologize either.”

“For my ignorance?”

_“Ignorance, yet knowledge,_ ” Anakin said, a perfect parody of Master Yoda if he said so himself.

Obi-Wan snorted his drink.

Anakin preened. Completely justified, he thought. And Obi-Wan looked the most ridiculous he’d been so far, even more then getting bludgeoned in the face with cold water. His copper hair flopped onto his forehead, his eyes scrunched in, and he sputtered and coughed nearly choking on laughter.

_Stars’ end, he’s beautiful._

As soon as Obi-Wan could stop waving his hand in front of his dripping nose, he set the now half-empty glass on the counter. “You’re awfully smug,” he said. Fondly. Anakin hoped, fondly.

“I deserve it.” Anakin grinned.

“Fair enough,” Obi-Wan said, giving his jaw one last swipe before leaving the drink on the counter and joining Anakin in the main space.

“I mean it, though.” Obi-Wan hadn’t sat yet, but Anakin tried to move his elbows in closer to his sides, to show there was room on the bed. “You didn’t know, but you knew I’d be okay in the end. You trusted me. If it...” He’d thought about this, all day, but getting the words out was like pulling teeth. “If it hurt me that much, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t want to be here. And I do. I might even want to do that again. Not tonight. But I want to see how far we can go. I didn’t stop you, and I’m not giving up on something I want just because it scares me.”

Obi-Wan’s cheeks were still tinged red from laughing, bright enough that it hid some of his freckles in the blur. Anakin noticed a tiny, darker mole under his right eye, wanted to reach up and touch it. But Obi-Wan spoke first. “You really are singularly brave. I hope you know that, Padawan Skywalker.”

A cold pang chased Anakin’s heartbeats, speared through the space between them. “Could you call me by my first name?”

He didn’t want to sound weak, or needy, or childish. But he wanted this more. He was already reaching off the bed, already halfway to his feet, his hands drawing in toward Obi-Wan’s cheeks, pulled in more like falling than rising.

Obi-Wan whispered it, just before their lips met. _“Anakin.”_

No one else had ever said his name like that. No one would. But Anakin would do everything to hear it again, chased that sound with his lips, his tongue. He held Obi-Wan’s cheeks and kissed, and Obi-Wan’s hands came down on his shoulders. Anakin shuddered--but no, Obi-Wan didn’t push him away. He kissed back, parted his lips, tilted up the short way to let Anakin deeper. They took off their clothes like ordinary people, let them fall by the bedside. Obi-Wan took care with Anakin’s belt and reverently set it down-- _this weapon is your life_ , a memory of Qui-Gon reminded him, the echo of Ilum, years ago--but as soon as his hands were free they touched Anakin’s bare back and there were no more reminders of the Temple walls.

“Let me show you what I’ve learned.” Anakin wasn’t sure if he meant it to be a question or a command, but it came out breathless and somewhere between.

Obi-Wan’s hair tickled Anakin’s neck when he nodded, just once. Anakin kissed him again, quick but thorough, and pushed Obi-Wan down to the bed. The mattress was so low to the ground that when Anakin got on his knees beside it he still had to fold nearly double to bow his head and kiss his way down Obi-Wan’s chest. He couldn’t help nuzzling into the trail of hair pointing down, savored the texture as it thickened and abraded his cheek. By the time he reached Obi-Wan’s cock it was hardening, waiting for him, putting off heat.

This time, Anakin didn’t make him wait. Didn’t bite. Didn’t make this about control. He _wanted_ , and he took, licked his way up to the head and then took it in. Obi-Wan tasted as good as he sounded, and Anakin made it clear he wanted more of both. He couldn’t sheathe it all like this but stars, he tried, relaxed his throat and refused to cough and bent until Obi-Wan was all he could breathe. A hand curled in his hair, at the back where it was just barely long enough to hold, and Anakin swiveled back into it, raking his chin along Obi-Wan’s thighs to prove he’d stay. The head of Obi-Wan’s cock swelled against Anakin’s palate and it was so _good_ to feel it so deep that he couldn’t even taste it, like it had always been there.

Instinct took over. Instinct was _devour him, keep him, show him everything_ , and Anakin did. What his throat couldn’t do, his hand took over, and he wanted Obi-Wan to hold him in place and fuck him open so that’s what he sent. His mind immolated with the image, Obi-Wan’s composure broken enough to shove himself deeper, and he had just enough presence to slip his shields and project that out. When Obi-Wan groaned his hips bucked up and his fist tightened in Anakin’s hair, and yes, that was what Anakin wanted, not everything but enough. Everything would mean Obi-Wan having him at both ends, filling him everywhere. Everything would be having this, forever, no matter what else either of them were.

Anakin pulled off only long enough to breathe, and call one of the dishes of unguent on the shelf to hand. He didn’t take his eyes off Obi-Wan, panting and splayed on the bed, his cock red and shining and hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Anakin slicked his fingers, let Obi-Wan see--his eyes were all pupils, and didn’t leave Anakin’s either--then reached behind himself and thrust them in.

_Sith Hells,_ being full at both ends was amazing. Anakin couldn’t get as deep as he wanted to with his hand but he took Obi-Wan to the hilt in front and knew he’d have the rest later. He didn’t dare let anything touch his own cock, not even the side of the bed, knew it would push him over and let Obi-Wan know. He felt that presence around him, strong and sure, promising him that _yes, we will, yes, I’m here, yes, I’m proud of you have you want this want you--_

Anakin gasped for air, sat down hard on his hand. Obi-Wan looked up from the bed, propped himself on an elbow as his fingers slid out of Anakin’s hair.

“Say it again,” Anakin begged, or commanded, or neither.

Obi-Wan blinked, confusion clear across his eyes. But it faded, released into the Force around him, and he nodded once the moment passed.

“Anakin,” he said, more certain this time. “Yes.”

Anakin climbed over him, nudged him along the bed until he sat with his back to the wall, crawled until he could straddle Obi-Wan’s cock. He remembered those admonitions from the second night, and took the time to slick Obi-Wan up too. Even then, when he sank down, he wasn’t as ready as the other times, but that just meant he’d take it slower, inch by inch until his body remembered what it was supposed to be and who was supposed to be in it. Obi-Wan guided him down, thumbs driving into Anakin’s hipbones. _Trembling._ Obi-Wan was trembling. Every breath shook through him and into Anakin and by the time Anakin had taken it all he couldn’t tell which of them was holding back more. He pitched forward, took Obi-Wan’s hands in his, held them firm against his skin.

“I’m all right,” Anakin said, so Obi-Wan wouldn’t have to ask. “I want this.”

Obi-Wan’s nose bumped Anakin’s collarbone, close enough to feel him smile. “Then it’s yours.”

“Yours too,” Anakin laughed, and rode his hips in.

Maybe it was the angle, or the hot twinge of pain, but every move Anakin made sent currents of pleasure racing up his spine. They beat against his back like waves every time their chests brushed together, every time their lips sought each other out and barely met. Anakin held tight to Obi-Wan’s hands even after they slipped off his hips, anchored them to the mattress. He could go harder. He could take more. Obi-Wan thrust up to meet him, set a rhythm for Anakin to follow, too slow but powerful and deep.

Like breathing. Like meditation.

There were no lessons in this. There were no rotes or tasks or phantom images or exercises of control. There was the Force, but the Force was in everything, and no matter how strong it was with either of them they were still only two sentient beings woven into its perpetuity, come together to chase the same goal. Anakin felt Obi-Wan’s urgency layered over his own, brought both of their hands between them so that he could share it too. Obi-Wan held him, filled him, kissed his throat as if he could fill up where he’d been before. Something rang in Anakin’s ears, an incoherent jumble of half-words and sobs. His own voice, he thought, distantly, in the tiny part of him that was still alone.

He had no idea who came first. All he knew was that a surge of perfect heat flooded him inside and out, shattered him and reassembled him all at once, better. Stronger. Whole, with Obi-Wan sealing all the gaps. He didn’t pass out this time, didn’t crash back into reality either; when he shifted, with Obi-Wan still inside him, he gasped for air--and realized that this was the first breath they’d taken out of synch in he didn’t know how long.

Obi-Wan’s fingertips traced lazily up his spine. Anakin looked up--he didn’t know he’d hung his head in the first place, but looked up, overshot, caught Obi-Wan’s eyes on the way back down. They shone. This close, this bright, they were almost more blue than grey.

“So proud,” Obi-Wan sighed, “I’m so proud of you,” and Anakin let go only to hold him tighter.

* *

Morning came without dawn: the skies beyond the window were overcast and slate-grey, like Coruscant had shed its exoskeleton in the night and still slumbered within it. What little light breached the room was cold and pale, but an insistent warmth crossed Anakin’s face and shoulders, and the planet hummed beneath him like an engine.

No, like a heartbeat. He’d pillowed himself on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. His braid stretched out, a mostly-straight line standing out like a river through Obi-Wan’s paler skin and darker chest-hair. Anakin wedged himself closer, threw an arm around him and pulled in tight. Obi-Wan _snored_ , a little, the short rumbling kind that felt like a speeder failing to power on, and Anakin snickered into Obi-Wan’s skin. Leave it to the most put-together man in the Temple to have inelegant sleeping habits. He looked younger, with his lips parted and eyes closed and chin tilted toward the ceiling. Anakin kissed under it, and Obi-Wan’s throat bobbed and stuttered. Awake? No. But on his way.

Anakin was often hard in the mornings: when he made a quick inquiry with his knee toward Obi-Wan’s crotch, it turned out that he was too. Anakin wondered if it would be considered a breach of engagement to wake him up with a blowjob. Probably. That sounded like the kind of thing they’d have to talk about first. Frankly, amazing as it sounded, Anakin had to admit that if someone tried that on him there would be a very real chance of his battle instincts coming to a head and therefore kicking whoever tried in the face. Another time, then. But a thought to share all the same. He sent it through the Force into Obi-Wan’s dreams, if he was dreaming, and Obi-Wan shifted beneath him on the bed, hips twitching against Anakin’s thigh. Anakin had to writhe against him, kept it to one okay maybe two insistent nudges, not as good as a hand would be but waking up next to him and not having to be embarrassed about it was a thrill on its own.

So was Obi-Wan waking up with a catch in his breath, and a gentle scoff into Anakin’s hair. “Padawan Skywalker,” he said, low and roughened and gentle.

Not his name anymore? Well, it was morning, and that was new last night. Maybe just a slip.

Anakin dragged his hard dick along Obi-Wan’s leg and hip as he shifted to try and kiss him good morning. He only made it partway up before Obi-Wan extricated himself and turned onto his side instead, eyes level with Anakin’s now.

“Morning,” Anakin said, leaning in.

Morning-sour kisses were still kisses, and Obi-Wan did kiss back, but not as long as Anakin would have liked him to. He pulled back, smiling, and rolled over to get out of the bed, and stretched. Anakin didn’t mind the view from behind at all, but touching would be better, _was_ better. Maybe he was meant to wait. “Off to medbay?”

“Not today,” Obi-Wan said, arms still laced overhead as he stretched, unselfconscious.

“Then get back here.” Anakin sat up, scooted toward the edge of the bed and didn’t get up. “I don’t have anywhere to be either.”

Obi-Wan glanced over his shoulder. His cheeks might have lifted in a smile, but his eyes still looked bleary and tense. “I _do_ have somewhere to be.”

“Okay, just not medbay.” Anakin reached out, took Obi-Wan by the hips and tugged him back a step. “So don’t shave.”

“I may not,” Obi-Wan admitted. He cocked his head to the side, stretching the tendons in his neck, but then turned and sat back down beside Anakin. “And you’re right, I do have some time.”

Anakin tried to tilt them both back onto the mattress, but Obi-Wan resisted enough that, all right, they could stay sitting up. It could be like last night--Anakin hoped the position would remind him, and maneuvered the best he could to straddle Obi-Wan’s lap, lean in, kiss the corner of his mouth--

“We have to talk first,” Obi-Wan said, while Anakin’s lips were still on him. “This is important.”

Anakin grumbled, but talking didn’t mean he had to stop touching.

“And I want to tell you before I take it up with the Council.”

\--wow. Those two words, _the Council_ , were the most decisive bonerkill Anakin had ever experienced. And his disbelieving repetition, “The Council?” put the last nail in that coffin.

Obi-Wan nodded, his hair tickling Anakin’s chest. “You’ve inspired me,” he said. “Your bravery--your strength--I can’t help but think that the confluence of meeting you and what I’ve been asked to do is a sign from the Force. I’ve finally been chosen for something. And I want to commit to that choice, take that leap. You’re going to be my last student.”

Anakin’s heart surged all the way into his throat. It beat, and he couldn’t breathe. “That’s wonderful,” he said, barely. It was all real, then--he felt the same way as Anakin felt, the same pull, the same perfection--

“I’m so glad,” Obi-Wan breathed. “I’m so glad I met you. I’d never have the courage to leave otherwise.”

\--leave.

_Leave._

_“What?”_

“The Duchess of Mandalore lost her ship’s physician,” Obi-Wan went on, like nothing was wrong, like he wasn’t tearing Anakin into pieces with every word, “among all the others, in that slaughter. She’s lobbied for aid from the Republic, but doesn’t want to get the Jedi involved in a civil conflict, so she asked me to join her. I’m not a Jedi and I never will be, but I can be so much more help there than here--”

“How could you,” Anakin murmured, shivering, but Obi-Wan was still talking.

“--and it if wasn’t for you, I’d still be afraid,” he laughed. “Well, I’m still afraid. But I’m going ahead. Like you.”

Words died.

“So, thank you.” Obi-Wan was _smiling_ , how was he smiling and relaxed and genuinely happy when Anakin was breaking apart, “Thank you, Padawan Skywalker, for everything--”

“Anakin,” he said. Growled. Sobbed. Somewhere between. “You called me Anakin.”

Obi-Wan blinked. “Forgive me.”

“No. You--” Anakin’s jaw wouldn’t close, no matter how dried out he felt, how the anger was burning down from his eyes and mouth into everything else. “You’re _mine_.”

“We still have two more days, I promise--”

“No!” His skin was cold, the wrong kind of slick, and Anakin couldn’t touch it anymore. Not now. He shoved off the bed, clipped Obi-Wan’s shoulder on the way but who cared, he deserved that and worse. “You can’t go!”

“I thought you’d be happy,” Obi-Wan said. It echoed in the scorched places in Anakin’s skull.

Anakin hit him.

It was decidedly against everything the Jedi stood for. Obi-Wan was seated, naked, unarmed, a _friend_ , a civilian, a healer, but none of that mattered. Anakin slugged him high on the cheekbone, hard enough that Obi-Wan reeled onto the mattress with a clear explosive _thud_. The Force tensed around Anakin but he knew what Obi-Wan would do and deflected it, easily, blasted all that presence out of his mind and threw up a shield so solid that not even Master Yoda could get through.

The Force had never felt so cold before. Then again, neither had Anakin.

Obi-Wan cringed on the bed, clutching his face, grimacing.

“You don’t have to call the guards,” Anakin spat, turning on his heel to try and find yesterday’s clothes on the floor. “I won’t do that again.”

“No,” Obi-Wan agreed. “You won’t.”

Anakin shoved on his pants and one of his tunics, his heartbeat pummeling his ears like repeating blaster fire. At some point, Obi-Wan brushed past him on the way to the ‘fresher, which soon smelled of bacta through the still-open door. The chill that permeated Anakin’s body hummed in his sinuses, threatened a headache for the ages, but Anakin had never let pain hold him back before and wasn’t about to start now. He charged for the door and keyed it open, half-dressed but completely ready to leave.

“Forgive me,” Obi-Wan said, from wherever he was. Anakin wouldn’t look back. “Evidently, I’ve taught you nothing.”

The door sliced shut like a plasma burn.

* *


	7. Chapter 7

Jar’Kai was a fucking joke.

How had Anakin ever worried about getting it? There was no point. The salle was in ruins around him, a sparking mess of remotes and training droids, and he hadn’t taken a single shot. Both sabers anchored his hands, the only points of heat in Anakin’s world, two bright suns in the blackness of his space.

It wasn’t a question of splitting his focus; it was becoming that beast with two minds. One automatic system, one manual. One to persist, and one to act. The last remote flying spewed its bolts at him and Anakin deflected them all with a whirl of his right saber, swiveled under the repeating stream and slammed his left into the droid from behind. It fell to the floor in pieces.

“Yes, and no,” Qui-Gon said from the doorway.

Anakin powered both blades off and didn’t turn around.

The detritus on the floor scraped and shifted around Qui-Gon’s steady footsteps. Anakin sensed him, but didn’t see him, didn’t have to. “You think you have this well in hand,” Qui-Gon said. The Force made his sarcasm clear. It stung.

“I didn’t split my focus.”

“No. But you haven’t honed it either.”

“Try me,” Anakin said.

“I intend to.” Qui-Gon drew his saber, and Anakin turned to face him. He’d only seen his Master look so sad twice before.

It didn’t matter. None of that mattered. _Focus_ mattered.

All three blades turned on at once. Even if Anakin attacked from the start, Qui-Gon’s form was impenetrable. Two blows in and he’d already gotten in under Anakin’s crossed sabers, redoubled from behind him. Anakin dodged, rather than block, and pulled back enough to whirl his right wrist--it still stung, from punching Obi-Wan--and charge in again. Their sabers connected, seared each other with curls of ozone and smoke. For all the glowing blue and green, Anakin saw only red.

Qui-Gon glared down at him, level and candid. His single saber held both of Anakin’s off, not easily but surely, his power clear in all the hollows of his face and neck and wrists. Anakin snarled and forced himself upward, pulled his blades apart as hard and fast as he could. A lock of singed hair fell to the ground between them--it had to be Qui-Gon’s.

Anakin launched himself forward again, not caring how Qui-Gon reacted. His green saber swept in front of Anakin’s face, a blinding fan, then across, at the level of Anakin’s eyes.

It didn’t move.

The world lurched under Anakin, a torrent of twisting fear. That glowing blade might be the last thing he’d ever see. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t hold his sabers. Couldn’t _think_ , except to feel the air around him freeze and empty until there was nothing to breathe.

The Force called to him, asked him where he’d gone, begged him to return.

The saber powered off. Qui-Gon loomed over him, blocked out the lights of the salle, and Anakin dropped both his blades at once. He flung himself into Qui-Gon’s arms, and that third saber joined the others on the floor, rolled and skittered and came to a stop just as Qui-Gon held him back.

“He’s leaving the Temple,” Anakin said, as if that could explain everything.

Qui-Gon nodded, and let that be enough for now.

* *

Anakin hadn’t eaten yet, but it only started to hit him when he and Qui-Gon returned to their quarters and the kitchen still smelled like breakfast. He nearly doubled over when his stomach made it clear that _it_ had had just as exciting and awful a morning as the rest of him. Qui-Gon chuckled to himself and patted Anakin on the back, told him to settle in or shower. He’d handle lunch.

On the one hand, a proper water shower, or even a bath, was a historically reliable way to make Anakin’s day better. On the other, he’d spent so much time in the shower with Obi-Wan that it would be impossible to take one and not go off the rails again, and he was supposed to be calming down. So he took a quick and perfunctory sonic and changed his clothes, and emerged fifteen minutes later to find Qui-Gon still in the kitchen, seasoning a pot of simmering grains. Anakin was also surprised to see a side of sliced meat warming on the back burner: Qui-Gon didn’t cook meat often, though he respectfully ate whatever anyone put in front of him, so it was probably there mostly for Anakin’s benefit. And it smelled _delectable_.

“Another minute or two,” Qui-Gon warned him, so Anakin curled up on the window seat and watched the city traffic, levels and layers still powerful enough to breach the Temple walls. He still felt cold, drew the curtains around him like a blanket. It didn’t help.

Before he knew it, Qui-Gon was handing him a bowl and chopsticks and a steaming cup of tea, and Anakin accepted it all while Qui-Gon pulled the table-shelf over and sat on a cushion beside it. The first few mouthfuls went a long way toward warming Anakin up, and he was halfway through the bowl before he even remembered to thank Qui-Gon.

“It’s fine.” Qui-Gon smiled over the rim of his teacup. “You’ve had an ordeal.”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“I would.” Qui-Gon set the teacup down, picked up his chopsticks instead and idled with them while Anakin ate. “I haven’t spoken much about my prior Padawans, have I?”

Anakin shook his head. He knew their names and their general circumstances, had met Darsha on Tatooine before she died on Naboo, and was introduced to Feemor when they crossed path with the AgriCorps a few years ago, but honestly he’d always been a little jealous of them both. And he knew not to ask about--

“Xanatos came to the Order late, like you,” Qui-Gon said, and Anakin settled in for an uncomfortable story. “My failure with him is probably the main reason the Council didn’t want me to take you on. He had powerful attachments; to his family, his past, his title. But those attachments weren’t what drove him out of the Order. When you think about it, I was just as attached.” He smiled fondly, glancing out the window. “To Feemor, who taught me how to teach. To Darsha, who gave her life for mine. And, yes, to Xanatos. I failed him, but that failure doesn’t negate all he taught me.”

“How could he teach you anything?”

“It’s what I said about attachments, Anakin. His bonds weren’t responsible for his fall. His _pride_ was. He set himself apart...and so did I. When I was chasing him across the galaxy for all his crimes, it wasn’t about him, or the Order, or even the people he hurt. It was about my pride. I nearly succumbed to it, Anakin. I forgot all the other things I cherished and the people that I wanted to help. And my selfishness, my clinging to this idea of my Padawan and his failure, nearly drove me out of the Order altogether.

“I’m surrounded by the Fallen, Anakin. My Padawan, Darsha’s killer, my Master, and some would count me among them.”

“But Master, no--”

“I know. And the same people would call me heretical for saying what I’m about to. I still love them all. I still search for Feemor in the Force and hope that he’s found peace. I grieved for Xanatos but I don’t let him haunt me anymore. I miss my Master, but I can’t wish that he’d return to the Order if it’s at odds with his beliefs. And I mourned Darsha, but I didn’t let that stop me from teaching you.”

Anakin set down the bowl, nearly empty, beside him on the window seat. “But how? How do you let go, like that?”

“It isn’t a matter of letting go.” Qui-Gon took a quick sip of tea, nudging his half-full bowl toward Anakin. “There’s more in the kitchen, go on and finish this.” Well, Anakin wouldn’t turn that down. While he ate, Qui-Gon went on, “I haven’t let go of them. But I’m not _holding on_ to them either.”

A fragment of meat caught between Anakin’s teeth.

“When my Master left the Order, I thought I would never see him again. But I respected his decision, and we parted on good terms, and that is why your mother is safe in his service. When Feemor failed, I made an effort to show him that I didn’t blame him for it. And if you decided to leave the Order today, as long as you didn’t make that choice in haste or in anger, I would understand.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

Qui-Gon caught his eye, smiled. “I would. But a part of you will not have left.”

Anakin froze, but the chill in his shoulders was gone.

“Live in the moment,” Qui-Gon said, as he often said, but the Force surrounding them both gave his words a warmth and weight that Anakin hadn’t felt before. “Enjoy the moment. No one can take that away from you, whether or not you experience it again.”

“But there’s more. I _know_ there’s more.”

“Think of it this way, Anakin: someday, I won’t be here to guide you. I’ll pass into the Living Force and be only another part of it, and perhaps you won’t be able to reach me. But you’ll come to make choices and wonder what I would have done. You’ll pass on things I’ve taught you to Padawans of your own. And, in the case of your specialist, I’m sure you’ll have other lovers.”

“No one like him.”

“No. But wouldn’t you rather share what he’s taught you without regret?”

“I’d rather not have to.”

“Then has he asked you to go with him?”

Anakin didn’t have to answer that.

Qui-Gon sighed, deep and rumbling, as he stood to clear the food away. “If I were you, I’d meditate on this.”

“If you were me, I wouldn’t have to,” Anakin teased.

“A fair point. Tell it to the cosmos.”

“Yes, Master.”

* *

This would have been his ninth night with Obi-Wan, but no summons came to warn him that he was late. No message got passed along by some escort droid at the door. Qui-Gon meditated and read. Anakin finished modifying that compensator. Evening turned into the dead of a quiet night, and Qui-Gon went to bed, so Anakin retired to his own room and tried to do the same. Tried, being the operative word.

It shouldn’t have felt so strange to be alone in the dark.

He dreamed of Padmé, for the first time in what felt like months, even if it had probably only been a week. She walked beside him through the streets of Mos Espa in all her finery, but the sand didn’t leave any marks on her gown. He was taller than her now, much taller, but her hair was piled so high that it cast shadows on his cheek. He took her hand. He took her into a dark alley. He took her against the wall.

“Careful,” Obi-Wan said, over his shoulder. “Don’t you want her to want you too?”

He woke up, sweating but not hard.

* *

Obi-Wan lived--and wouldn’t for much longer--in a solitaire on the Temple’s third floor. It was surprisingly easy to slice the Archives and find that out. It was on a hall full of MediCorps and their apprentices, close enough that they could conceivably be on call, so Anakin expected it to be bustling no matter the time of day. It turned out, at just after noon, to be dim and quiet.

And Obi-Wan’s door was open. Because of the hovercrate parked in front of it.

Possessions. Right, not a Jedi, so he could have possessions. And the crate was open, half-full already, of datapads and civilian clothes and strongboxes, and Anakin didn’t mean to creep but it was that or walk right in to Obi-Wan’s room; where his back was turned, and his hands were busy, and he wouldn’t be expecting Anakin here at all.

Civilian clothes. It seemed wrong, and yet they suited Obi-Wan perfectly. Instead of his white robes, he wore deep grey slacks and a blue tunic with the sleeves rolled up. It brought out the gold and red in his hair, made the freckles on the back of his neck bright. He leaned over his bed, much smaller than the one he and Anakin had shared all week, folding more clothes, and his shoulders stiffened before Anakin raised his fist to knock on the doorjamb.

“Padawan Skywalker,” he said, low, quiet. Waiting.

Anakin knew exactly what he was supposed to say. “I fucked up,” came out first instead.

Obi-Wan straightened and turned around. His face wasn’t bruised--or course not, it wouldn’t be--but his eyes met Anakin’s as harshly as they had two nights ago. Even after he blinked, they stayed locked on Anakin’s. “Go on.”

Anakin nodded, more than once but short and shuddering. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you. At all. I won’t try to justify it.” Once he’d said that, the rest would be easier. “I didn’t want you to leave. I still don’t.”

“You don’t want me to leave, but you didn’t ask me to stay.”

Anakin shut his eyes, grit his teeth. “No. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to say no.”

When Anakin opened his eyes, Obi-Wan had sat on the bed between the piles of folded clothing. He leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees and looked up. “And do you know why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you don’t want me to say no.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you are a Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, as if it was an answer and not the gateway to a thousand more questions.

Anakin curled his hand into a fist, but all he did with it this time was push the door closed behind him.

“I know you said you don’t want me to ask questions of you when I presume to know the answers,” Obi-Wan went on. “And I don’t. I have had other students who’ve grown somewhat attached to me, it’s expected in my position. So let me presume, Padawan Skywalker: you’re different. In this, as in so many other things, you’re different.”

Something burned behind Anakin’s eyes, like he’d gone out into the dunes without covering his face. It ate away until tears fell.

“Yes,” he said. It didn’t stop his vision from clouding, with Obi-Wan at the center of it all, _watching_ him start to cry--

\--and rising. And crossing to him. And taking him in his arms, but not to kiss him; to give him a place to hide his tears. Anakin could barely lift his arms, the way Obi-Wan held him, but he curled his fists in the hem of Obi-Wan’s tunic to stop them from shaking.

“I don’t want to be the reason you leave.” Obi-Wan’s voice was barely a whisper, but assured, steady. “I would never ask that of you, the same as you wouldn’t ask me to stay. I know how hard you’ve fought to get this far. I’ve been there. It’s not something to be given up lightly.”

“It’s not lightly,” Anakin managed, “what I feel isn’t light. It feels like _everything_.”

“The Force is everything,” Obi-Wan said, and Anakin punched him lightly in the hip. But laughed. Uncomfortably. “I mean it, Padawan Skywalker. You are to be a Jedi. Don’t give it up for me.”

“What if I want to?”

Obi-Wan held on, but pulled back enough to look the short way up into Anakin’s eyes. “You would have wanted to before you met me, and you’d still want it after I left. That’s what I believe. One person, one attachment, could never be strong enough to pull you away from the Order.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Perhaps not. But I believe it.”

“But you said I--” Anakin only realized what he was saying with half of the words hanging in the air. “--I inspired you. I gave you that strength. If it’s true for you then it can be true for me!”

Obi-Wan palmed Anakin’s cheek and sighed. “You’re too young to make that choice.”

“You were too young to have it made for you.” The tears had faded, but Anakin’s eyes still stung, and heat rose up the back of his neck. “Let me ask you one question, Obi-Wan. One more question--and I want a straight answer. No lesson. No meditating. Have you ever been in love?”

His eyes were open and clear when he answered: “Yes.”

Anakin’s heart _stopped_ , dead weight in his chest. “And...are you leaving because of that person?”

“You said _one_ more question,” Obi-Wan joked, smirking but still wry and tight, and when he blinked his eyes were clouded. “But. Yes.”

Slowly, Anakin opened his fists and dropped the hem of Obi-Wan’s tunic. He leaned in, not to kiss him, just to ground himself against the sharp static charge in his spine. “One night. You promised me one more night.”

Obi-Wan nodded, his hair tickling Anakin’s cheek. “I did. But promise me in kind: let me go.”

_Acknowledge the distance between us,_ it echoed in Anakin’s mind, _and accept it._

It was another way of saying _Trust me._

“I will,” Anakin said. Barely.

When his heart started to beat again, it bruised.

* *

In that room with the low broad bed, the conservator and the ‘fresher and the datashelf brimming with mysteries, Anakin sat and meditated for two hours. Unmitigated Empty Meditation, even. He forgot his body, forgot time and forgot place, and when Obi-Wan joined him at last, stubble on his cheeks and still wearing those civilian clothes, his existence was merely a collection of moments.

A moment: Obi-Wan ascertaining his consent, asking after his desires, and finding him pliant and willing.

A moment: Obi-Wan laying him out, molding him into something perfect, balanced, complete, to be cherished and eternal.

A moment: that beautiful, measured voice telling him _yes, touch me--yes, have me--yes, there, harder,_ and Obi-Wan’s pulse so sharp Anakin could taste it even under layers of skin.

A moment: the Force subsuming him, restraining him, but Obi-Wan’s voice compelling him to push past it, obey him and not It, resist his mind and take with his body, have what he craved like water, like air.

A moment: breaking past it, at last, to drive his nails into Obi-Wan’s back and push him in the rest of the way.

An eternity: being fucked, inexorably and pitilessly, long past coming, long past forgetting how to breathe.

A moment: calling him _Master_ , and meaning it, and coming again.

* *

Obi-Wan slept not exactly peacefully, but it was more than Anakin could say for himself. He woke when the city lights of Coruscant beyond the Temple walls were still bright, in the hours of night when ordinary sentients would be just getting started. Living it up. Dissolute in the streets. Taking lovers home. Entwined with each other in staterooms or brothels or the privacy of their homes. And here was Anakin, beside Obi-Wan, for possibly the last time.

When Anakin curled closer, he measured his body by Obi-Wan’s, aligned their toes, knees, hips, higher. If they had been a perfect match, they wouldn’t have fit together; but like this, Obi-Wan’s knees nestled just under Anakin’s, his pelvis to the top of Anakin’s thighs, the low concavity of his stomach right where Anakin was thick and hard. Obi-Wan didn’t stir. He snored gently; steadily, as much meditation as sleep. He tilted his head, just a touch, just a click, and his beard tickled Anakin’s collarbone.

_There isn’t any distance between us to acknowledge,_ Anakin thought, bright and clear. _Not right now._

Carefully, he draped an arm over Obi-Wan’s chest, turned his face into Obi-Wan’s hair to breathe him in. He couldn’t hold it, any more than he could hold any air, any more than he could keep the taste of something on his tongue long after it was gone.

Realization burned behind his eyes: yes. He could. From a certain point of view.

It had been seven years since he met Padmé, five since he’d seen her in person at all. They’d written each other, less as the years went on, with Anakin and Qui-Gon out in the black, but no personal contact whatsoever. But he knew her laugh, her scent, the precise dark sheen of her hair that the holoprojectors never got right.

He’d spoken to his mother mostly through holos since she’d been freed to Serenno, for the same reason, but nothing could erase her from his mind or unwrite the years they’d spent together, just the two of them. And yes, it strained him not having her on Coruscant, but he didn’t worry for her safety and didn’t doubt she loved him. Qui-Gon had explained, years ago, that even if the Jedi allowed attachments that deep, Anakin would still have to spend months and even years not seeing her, just to train his power. And it had to be worth it. And it would _still_ be worth it, to be a Jedi, to be strong enough to protect the people he loved, to be free.

Anakin had done this before. Let go, without letting go. Separated without separating. Trusted the Force to bring all the pieces of himself back together when he needed them most. He’d done it before, and sometimes he _hated_ it, but he could do it again. And would, more importantly. Would, do it again.

_Just not until morning,_ he thought, drifting back to sleep with Obi-Wan’s even heartbeat soothing his ear. _Not yet._

* *

Anakin woke alone. There was no note, this time, but he knew where to go.

The Mandalorians had taken over a section of the docking bays, and of course the flagship would be the last to leave. The _Coronet_ dominated the hangar, the chaos off-board of cargo and consignment unnavigable but for the Force. But Anakin knew his way through it, and barged toward the loading ramp just in time.

“Obi-Wan!”

Halfway up the ramp, he looked over his shoulder. The Mandalorians kept moving, around him and past him, but Obi-Wan was an island of stillness in the traffic, in those muted civilian clothes, eyes finding Anakin’s like they were meant to. Anakin coasted to a stop at the base of the ramp, caught his breath from running, looked up.

Obi-Wan took the first step back. Anakin met him more than halfway.

There wasn’t any cause for words: none would have sufficed. But Anakin grabbed him and held on, and Obi-Wan held him back, a hand threaded through Anakin’s hair. The world shouted orders around them, techs and pilots and soldiers and Jedi in their secluded gravities, but Anakin and Obi-Wan let the galaxy go on without them.

He had no idea how long the moment took to pass. He didn’t need to. It was his, now. Obi-Wan was his, now. Not even time could take this away.

Neither of them chose to let go. It just happened. Anakin ground his teeth to keep from shouting or crying. Obi-Wan smiled, in that tense, private way that didn’t reach his eyes.

Discreetly, Obi-Wan reached up to the collar of his tunic and peeled the fabric back, the same as he had that night when he ceded control.

Last night’s bruises stood out like dark nebulae in photonegative on his pale skin.

When Anakin looked up, Obi-Wan was smirking. His eyebrows pulsed, once, a reminder. A promise. A challenge.

“Don’t wait,” Obi-Wan said, so quiet Anakin wasn’t sure he’d heard it at all. “Trust me.”

Anakin nodded, his breath coming short. “May the Force be with you,” he whispered.

Obi-Wan nodded, letting the collar of this tunic fall back into place. He caught sight of something over Anakin’s shoulder, and stood aside enough to bow deeply at whoever had just interrupted them.

Anakin sensed Qui-Gon there before he turned around completely, but there he was, at the base of the ramp. Qui-Gon returned Obi-Wan’s bow with one of his own, shorter, the way that would be more of a nod on someone not Qui-Gon’s size. When he looked up, Obi-Wan straightened as well, but kept his eyes lowered. Qui-Gon shook his head, a gentle smile on his jaw.

“Thank you,” he mouthed, inaudible but for the Force.

Obi-Wan nodded again, and gave Anakin one last look that Anakin refused to forget. And Anakin took a backward step, and let him turn and go.

The world went on. The hangar swam with life, hummed with machinery. Anakin backed a few more steps down, then turned, gathering himself together as he reached his Master’s side. Qui-Gon held him without question, so he wouldn’t have to try and look back.

* *

“Can I write to him?” Anakin asked, not much later, on the way to the training salle.

Qui-Gon laughed. “Of course. But I think you owe a letter to Padmé first.”

“--What?”

“She’s coming to Coruscant,” Qui-Gon said, turning a corner. “Elections are over, and it’s official: she’ll be Senator after her term as Queen is done.”

It didn’t erase all of the pain of saying goodbye to Obi-Wan, but the thrill that wrapped around Anakin’s chest definitely did _something_. “Really?”

“Yes. You’ll need to apologize on our behalf for not being here to welcome her. We’re being deployed to Lothal.”

“Master,” Anakin groaned--

Qui-Gon cut him off with a proud, broad smile. “Trust yourself to return,” he said.

Anakin resolved to.

* *


	8. Epilogue

**Five years later -- Standard Day 468 of the Clone Wars**

The so-called New Mandalorians looked much like the old ones, as far as Anakin knew: predominantly human, predominantly frowning, and perpetually blocking doorways. They didn’t part for him and Ahsoka as they made their way to the Duchess’s throne room, like they’d been expecting someone smaller.

At least it was impossible to tell whether they were giving Ahsoka any dirty looks. Those bucket helmets hid damn near everything.

The throne room itself, once they got past the obstructive living statues, expanded to a silver dais, flanked by still more guards and courtiers. A protocol droid at the door announced them for the Duchess’s benefit: “Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and CC-7567 Rex, to see you, your Grace.”

Anakin was sure that the Duchess was a lovely person, and Padmé thought highly of her of course--but Anakin’s eyes immediately landed beside the throne, not on it.

Obi-Wan had grown his beard out after all.

* *

“So who _is_ he?” Ahsoka taunted, because of course she’d noticed.

Anakin felt a surge of pride, because his Padawan’s insight was at least _partly_ to his credit, but Sith Hells did she get a thrill from prying into his love life. “Doctor Kenobi used to work at the Temple,” Anakin explained, and threw in some masterful deflection. “Why, are you interested?”

Ahsoka grimaced, shuddered all the way up to her montrals. “No way, Master. The last thing I want is to get tangled up in your stuff.”

“Prudent, Snips.” He wasn’t being entirely sarcastic, and he was sure she knew it, but threw her a stinkface just to be sure. “You’re not ready anyway.”

“Oh really?”

“Really,” Obi-wan said from the open door, grinning brightly.

Anakin’s breath knocked out of his chest. Stars, Obi-Wan looked good: these five years had been kind to him. His face wasn’t as haunted, his body thicker and stronger than it had been at the Temple. His hair had darkened--and maybe that was just a twinge of grey at the temples--and he was wearing it longer to complement that full and even beard. Mandalorian armor and bodygloves didn’t quite suit him, but his were brown and gold and blue, good colors to offset the shine in his eyes and his white, knowing smile.

Anakin hadn’t exactly gone _without_ these last five years, but Stars, he wanted to throw a leg over Obi-Wan right now.

Obi-Wan crossed into the room. Almost into Anakin’s space. Closer would be good. Also horrible. But good. “It’s wonderful to see you, Anakin.”

That name, in Obi-Wan’s voice, had lost none of its power. The sound went straight to Anakin’s groin and occupied it like an army.

“You too,” Anakin said, stupidly. “Sorry I haven’t had time to write.”

“I’ve seen you on the holocasts.” Obi-Wan waved his hand dismissively, but not condescendingly. Or at least Anakin hoped, not condescendingly. “I know you’ve been busy. And congratulations, on making Knight.”

“Thank you. And, um, congrats to you too. On the civil war.”

“ _No one_ deserves congratulations for that.” Obi-Wan winced, just enough to show through that veneer that would have served him so well as a Jedi, had the Force been willing. “But I’m glad it’s over. A pity the rest of the galaxy can’t catch up.”

Anakin tried his best to ignore Ahsoka making obscene kissy-faces over Obi-Wan’s shoulder. And probably failed. No, definitely failed. “So it’s--stable here for you?” 

“Until you and yours showed up, yes.” Fuck, Obi-Wan was close enough to touch now. But Anakin had waited five years already. He could manage another couple of minutes. Could. And _would._ “Her Grace isn’t altogether pleased to accommodate your war.”

“Her Grace doesn’t have to,” Anakin admitted. “Mandalore is Neutral Space. The GAR won’t be setting up shop, I promise. And we’ll pay for whatever we, um , requisition.” It was somewhat difficult to say that with Ahsoka’s ridiculous gestures, still ongoing. But then, she wasn’t wrong. Just rude. “Just, yeah. Pump and dump.”

Open mouth, insert foot. _Wow._

Blessedly, Obi-Wan laughed. It was still beautiful. “I completely understand. But you’ll need to stay sometime, to regroup.”

A wild, wonderful idea sparked in Anakin’s mind, and consumed him.

Qui-Gon wouldn’t object. And Qui-Gon had left the Order two years ago anyway--all the more reason he wouldn’t object.

“Actually, uh, we could use a medic.” The 501st wasn’t the most casualty-averse legion in the Order, after all. “If you’re up for it, I mean.”

Obi-Wan half-bowed, and it looked so strange in his armor, but Anakin already wanted to take it off of him piece by piece anyway so he couldn’t be faulted. At all, really.

“I could manage that,” Obi-Wan said. “I could do more there than here.”

The Force wrapped around Anakin’s shoulders, an embrace, warm and sudden and welcome. “We’d be glad to have you,” Anakin said, hoping against hope. “And, well, you wouldn’t have to enlist.”

“I know.”

Obi-Wan crossed completely into Anakin’s space, then--just one step, and it felt like the galaxy fell away. He remembered, in an instant, those ten days, the tension and the pain and the endless want, and the reasons he waited. It had felt, those first few months, like walking off a wound, but after, when he was in bed with Padmé, he still remembered those moments. And he’d told her, when she shared the stories of her handmaidens and the lovers she’d known before they’d come together, and she thanked him like Qui-Gon had thanked him, all those years ago.

Here he was, offering himself to Anakin again. Without those rules. Without a stated time, a stated place.

Without the Order.

Anakin reached up, put his hand to Obi-Wan’s throat. The bodyglove had a high neck, but it was easy to touch the places that he’d left a mark on five years ago. He remembered them perfectly. And Obi-Wan knew, lifted his chin to show Anakin that yes, he understood.

“I’ll run it by her Grace,” Obi-Wan said, leaning in to that brief touch. “But. Yes. I’d love to work with you again.”

All Anakin could do was nod. Barely, with his eyes not leaving Obi-Wan’s. “I’ve grown,” he assured him. “I’m sure you’ll be surprised.”

“Not at all,” Obi-Wan said. “I trusted you would.”

* *


End file.
